The implied duty of trust and confidence for pension lawyers
Produced in partnership with Clive Weber of Wedlake Bell
Practice notesThe implied duty of trust and confidence for pension lawyers
Produced in partnership with Clive Weber of Wedlake Bell
Practice notesDemonstrating an Employer has breached its duty of good faith is no easy matter.
The implied duty of good faith (known as the implied duty of Trust and confidence in the contractual context) was first established in a pensions context in Imperial Group Pensions Trust v Imperial Tobacco (Imperial) in 1991 and has been developed in subsequent cases. A modern restatement emerged in the High Court decision in the Prudential case in 2011. As the judge stated in Prudential, the duty of good faith cannot be 'freeze-framed' at the date of the Imperial decision.
However, while the duty has developed over time, it is now accepted that the 2014 High Court case IBM v Dalgleish went a step too far when it decided on the facts that the employer had breached its duty of good faith. This high watermark of the duty of good faith has significantly receded since then. Indeed, in August 2017, the Court of Appeal reversed almost the entirety of IBM v Dalgleish
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