A decision worth "noticing"

Waller-Edwards v One Savings Bank plc [2025] UKSC 22

Luke Harris

Notice is a familiar and important concept to trust lawyers. Paradigmatically, it is a key component of the defence of bona fide purchaser without notice, which determines whether a person takes a legal property interest subject to, or free from, an equity or equitable proprietary interest of another. Notice is a wider concept than knowledge and embraces constructive notice. Traditionally, a person is deemed to have notice (ie constructive notice) of a prior right when he does not actually know of it but would have learned of it had he made the requisite inquiries. A purchaser will be treated as having constructive notice of all that a reasonably prudent purchaser would have discovered. In Waller-Edwards v One Savings Bank plc [2025] UKSC 22, however, the court considered the constructive notice in a different context, where the concept has developed a special, rather different meaning - namely, in what circumstances banks are "put on inquiry" that the participant in a lending arrangement is subject to undue influence. In Waller-Edwards, Lady Simler explained (at para 2):