Breach of Fiduciary Duty

When someone who owes a fiduciary duty to someone else and that person breaches the fiduciary duty the consequences can be serious. Also, if you are a fiduciary and it is wrongly alleged that you breached a fiduciary obligation then you will need legal advice to help you deal appropriately with such false assertions. Litigant is determined to help its clients understand how these equitable rights operate and how to go about exercising them.

A fiduciary obligation ordinarily arises from a recognised category such as agent and principal, lawyer and client and so on. In some cases the duty comes about in an ad hoc manner given a particular set of circumstances where trust and confidence is involved. The duties of a fiduciary are usually expressed in the negative so that such person must not be in a position of conflict between their duty and interest and must not make an unauthorised profit.

When a fiduciary duty is breached you may be interested in seeking a gains based remedy such as an account of profits or perhaps equitable compensation. There are of course other remedies available but much will depend on the circumstances.

Potential Scenarios - Breach of Fiduciary Obligations

  • When a medical doctor accepts a substantial gift such as real estate from a patient when there is no informed consent;
  • When a business partner, in breach of the partnership agreement and fiduciary obligations, makes a secret profit which is not accounted for.

Important Quotes in Breach of Fiduciary Law Cases

"The difficulty in dealing with the appellant's contention is that the law has not, as yet, been able to formulate any precise or comprehensive definition of the circumstances in which a person is constituted a fiduciary in his or her relations with another. There are accepted fiduciary relationships, such as trustee and beneficiary, agent and principal, solicitor and client, employee and employer, director and company, and partners, which may be characterised as relations of trust and confidence. " - Breen v Williams [1996] HCA 57

Let Us Help You

  • Find out if a fiduciary duty of some kind was owed to you;
  • Know the content of the duty owed to you and how it applies to your facts;
  • Understand whether the duty was breached;
  • Deal with false allegations of a breach of duty if you are a likely defendant;
  • Put together the evidence for this type of case;
  • Pursue your rights if a duty owed to you was breached by seeking an account of profits, declaration of trust or equitable compensation.

Contact our commercial litigation lawyers for more information.