Skip to content
Now live on Mac, Windows & the web

The essential study platform

for UK law students tomasterpractiserevisequalifymaster

Cases, statutes, flashcards, SBAQs, essays, careers and more, all in one place. Built by law students, for law students.

Take a look at what's inside
The product · Dashboard

Your whole degree, on one screen.

Your docket, calendar, grades and study streak, the moment you open Obiter, you know exactly what today looks like.

The product · My Files

Notes that live where you study.

Store lecture notes, seminar prep and PDFs by module, then open any note in Obiter’s full editor and write, right there.

The product · SBAQ Practice

Practice that feels like the exam.

Timed, scenario-based questions written to exam standard, then a full session review showing exactly why each answer is right.

The product · Essay Practice

Essays with model answers.

Exam-standard essay and problem questions across every module, each with a full model answer to learn from.

The product · Flashcards

Built for law, not generic studying.

Case names, ratios and statute sections with spaced repetition, reveal the answer, rate yourself, move on.

The product · Legal Authorities

Every case, pre-briefed.

Search any UK case, statute or concept. Material facts, legal issues, holding and reasoning, verified against primary sources.

The product · Career Hub

From lectures to training contracts.

Live UK legal roles and an application tracker that follows every application from saved to offer.

The product · Obiter AI

Ask anything, grounded in real law.

An AI assistant that answers from Obiter’s verified database, citing real cases and real statutes, never inventions.

Good afternoon, Alex
Friday 3 July
A
MON29
TUE30
WED1
THU2
FRI3
SAT4
SUN5
Start a 25-Minute Study Session
Ask Obiter AI a Question
Practice My Flashcards
Start a New SBAQ Practice Test
Today's Docket+ Add
Read tort seminar cases13:00
SBAQ · Criminal Law drill15:00
Flashcards due: 19 cards18:30
Upcoming
Contract Law lectureFri 3 Jul · 15:00
Mooting societyMon 6 Jul · 18:00
Recently ViewedView all
RJ
R v JogeeUKSC · just now
WM
Wagon Mound (No 1)UKPC · 2h ago
Today's Bulletin
KC wins appeal against disbarment over Oxford University lie
els-constitutional · Legal Futures
From Your Study Guide
Big Law vs Mid Law in the US
career-routes · 5 min
My GradesView →
66.6% Upper Second
Yr 2
63.3%
Yr 3
68.0%
My Files
Search files...
New FolderNew NoteUpload ▾
AllStarredTrash
Folders
Contract Law
Tort Law
Files
Seminar 4: Breach of dutyEdited 2h ago
Causation & remoteness summaryEdited yesterday
Remedies table.pdf3 days ago
My Files  ›  Seminar 4: Breach of duty· UnsavedSave & Close
HomeInsertReferencesLayoutReview
Normal ▾Source Serif 4 ▾16 ▾ BIU
Seminar 4: Breach of duty
‹ Exit Question 5 of 5 ⚑ Something wrong?◷ 07:19
Fagan accidentally drives his car onto a police officer's foot. The officer asks him to move. Fagan refuses for a brief period, swearing at the officer and switching off the engine, before moving the car off the foot. Charged with assaulting a constable, he argues that actus reus and mens rea did not coincide, by the time he formed any intent, the act of driving onto the foot was complete.
Which of the following best states the controlling principle?
AThere is no offence: actus reus and mens rea did not coincide, and coincidence in time is required strictly under the contemporaneity rule.1
BThere is an offence: driving onto the foot can be treated as a continuing act, once mens rea supervenes on the continuing act, contemporaneity is satisfied.2
CThere is an offence because the defendant caused harm; causation of harm is the modern test for contemporaneity in assault.3
DThere is an offence because the defendant acted in a public place; public-place activity is the modern test for contemporaneity.4
Select an answer...Finish Session ›
← Back to SBAQSession Review↻ Retake
SubjectDaily 5
Score80%
Result4/5 correct
Time◷ 7:12
Date3 July 2026
Question Review
1
White places potassium cyanide in his mother's wine intending to kill her so that he can inherit. His mother dies that night but the post-mortem reveals death from natural causes, a heart attack, entirely unconnected with the cyanide, which she had not yet drunk. The Crown nevertheless charges him with murder.
Which of the following best states the controlling principle on factual causation in homicide?
AFactual causation requires that the defendant's act be a substantial cause; substantial causation alone is enough even where the death would have occurred at the same time and in the same way without the act.
BFactual causation requires that, but for the defendant's act, the result would not have occurred; here the death would have occurred in the same way regardless and the but-for test is not satisfied.
CFactual causation requires proof that the defendant has used poison; poison use is the modern test of factual causation under English doctrine on causation in homicide.
DFactual causation requires proof of intention to kill; intention to kill is the modern test of factual causation under English doctrine on causation in homicide.
Explanations

B: Correct. Factual causation is the but-for test; the result would have occurred without the act. Authority: R v White [1910] 2 KB 124.  A: Wrong, substantial cause is the legal-causation threshold, not factual.

2
A taxpayer disputes the construction of a tax statute; the relevant words admit of two reasonable meanings. Counsel wishes to invite the court to admit Hansard, in particular a statement made by the responsible minister during committee stage…
Which of the following best states the conditions under which the court may admit Hansard?
CHansard may be admitted in all cases without qualification; parliamentary materials are routinely treated as interpretive material.
AHansard may be admitted where the legislation is ambiguous or obscure, the material relied on consists of statements by a minister or other promoter of the Bill, and the statements relied upon are clear.
Essay Practice
Browse essay practice questions, or generate a new one.
+ Generate a question
ModuleAll modules ▾
AllProblemEssay
Search questions...
+Generate a new question

Create a new problem or essay grounded in Obiter's verified database.

Bryn Interiors and the September Deadline

Bryn Interiors Ltd contracted with Fenwick & Vane Ltd, a serviced office operator, to fit out Fenwick's new Manchester building for £240,000…

PQContract Law
Rowanbrook House and the Succession Clause

Caring Horizons Ltd, a private company, operates Rowanbrook House, a residential care home in Westmere. Edith, aged 86…

PQAdmin & HR
Resulting Trusts After Westdeutsche: Intention, Absence and the Quistclose Stress Test

"The resulting trust does not respond to what the transferor intended; it responds to what the transferor failed to intend."

EQEquity & Trusts
The Secure Accommodation Scheme: Sections 3, 4, 6 and the Private Contractor

The (fictitious) Secure Accommodation Act 2025 requires the Home Secretary to place asylum-seeker families…

PQELS / Constitutional
Dangerous Goods: Strict Liability under Article IV Rule 6

Fertigo Ltd is a UK-incorporated agricultural chemicals manufacturer headquartered in Hull with production facilities at Immingham…

PQMaritime & Shipping
The Employment Claims Fees Order: Access to Justice Against the Treasury Brief

The (fictitious) Courts Funding Act 2024 empowers the Lord Chancellor by s 7(1) to "make by order such provision about fees…"

EQELS / Constitutional
Nina, the Kitchen Knife and the Debt That Followed Ben Home

Nina Kovač, 47, has type 1 diabetes. On the evening of 19 April 2026 she takes her usual insulin dose but, distracted by a phone call…

PQCriminal Law
Unjust Legislation and the Limits of Legal Obligation

Kristo is a journalist who, in October 2017, published a series of articles in a nationally circulated Ardovian newspaper…

EQJurisprudence
Classical and Rational Choice Theory: Explanatory Sufficiency

Critically evaluate the claim that classical criminology and its contemporary rational choice descendants provide the most persuasive…

EQCriminology
Himalaya Clauses, Privity and the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999

'The introduction of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 has rendered the Himalaya clause redundant as a mechanism…'

EQMaritime & Shipping
Greywick Storage and the Sprinkler Flood

Greywick Storage Ltd operates a furniture warehouse in Salford. Its standard conditions include clause 12…

PQContract Law
‹ Back to library⚑ Something wrong?
ESSAYEquity & Trusts17 authorities
Resulting Trusts After Westdeutsche: Intention, Absence and the Quistclose Stress Test
Add to My Questions↓ Download PDF ▾Save to My Files
Question

"The resulting trust does not respond to what the transferor intended; it responds to what the transferor failed to intend. Westdeutsche told us the opposite, and the law has been living with the contradiction ever since." Critically evaluate this statement in relation to presumed resulting trusts, automatic resulting trusts and the Quistclose trust.

Show Model Answer
Model Answer
Introduction

The statement compresses thirty years of debate into two sentences, and both need unpacking. The first sentence states the thesis associated with R Chambers and adopted by Lord Millett in Air Jamaica Ltd v Charlton [1999] 1 WLR 1399: the resulting trust responds to the absence of an intention to benefit the recipient, not to any positive intention to create a trust. The second sentence accuses Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC [1996] AC 669 of asserting the contrary and the law of tolerating the inconsistency.

This essay argues for three propositions. First, the absence-based account is correct as a description of when resulting trusts arise, and the older presumption cases support it once the presumptions are recognised as evidential defaults rather than findings of actual intention. Secondly, the alleged contradiction with Westdeutsche is smaller than advertised: what Lord Browne-Wilkinson rejected was not absence-based reasoning but the restitutionary extension of it. Thirdly, the Quistclose trust, properly analysed through Lord Millett's speech in Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley [2002] UKHL 12, is the absence thesis's hardest test and clearest vindication…

← Doctrine of consideration in contract law 4 / 10
Front
What does Tweddle v Atkinson illustrate about consideration and privity?
Press Space or click to reveal answer
Answer
Both consideration and privity are essential: a party must both provide consideration and be a party to the contract to enforce it. Third parties fail on both grounds in Tweddle.
Reveal Answer  Space
Legal Authorities
StatutesCasesConcepts
2 results
Salomon v A Salomon & Co LtdUKHL · 1897
Prest v Petrodel ResourcesUKSC · 2013
House of Lords · 1897
Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd
[1897] AC 22
company-law · separate-personality · corporate-veil
↓ Download BriefAdd to ReferencesSave to My FilesBookmarkSave Offline
Material Facts
  • 1Aron Salomon ran a boot-manufacturing business as a sole trader and then incorporated it as a limited company.
  • 2He transferred the business to the company in exchange for shares and secured debentures ranking ahead of unsecured creditors.
  • 3The company later became insolvent, and the unsecured creditors sought to hold Salomon personally liable, arguing the company was a sham and he was the true debtor.
  • 4The Court of Appeal accepted the creditors' argument, but the case was appealed to the House of Lords.
Legal Issues
Whether a company incorporated under the Companies Acts is a distinct legal entity from its shareholders and directors, even where one person effectively controls the company.
Whether a sole trader who incorporates their business can hold secured debt that takes priority over unsecured creditors.
Holding

The House of Lords unanimously held that the company was a validly incorporated separate legal entity, entirely distinct from its members and directors. Salomon's secured debentures took priority over the unsecured creditors because the company, not Salomon, owed the debts. The fact that one person owned almost all the shares and was the directing mind did not collapse the distinction between the individual and the corporation.

Judicial Reasoning

Lord Halsbury LC emphasised that once a company is duly formed and registered, it is a body corporate with rights and liabilities of its own; the court cannot go behind the legal entity to investigate the motives of the incorporators. Lord Macnaghten stated that the company is at law a different person altogether from the subscribers to the memorandum. There was no fraud or evasion of the law, Salomon's use of the corporate structure was entirely lawful.

Application Tracker
3Saved
4Applied
1Intervw
1Offer
0Reject
View all applications →
Filters Job Type
Training Contract
Vacation Scheme
Insight Day
Paralegal
Legal Assistant
Pupillage
Firm Tier
Magic Circle
Silver Circle
US Firms (London)
Top 50 UK
Region
London
South East
South West
Midlands
North West
Scotland
Career Hub
UK Legal Opportunities · Updated daily
Search roles, firms, locations...
All RolesSavedHidden
NEWPrivate Client Paralegal
TN Recruits
◦ UK
◦ £24k – £24k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWLegal Support Assistant Apprentice, Litigation
Blake Morgan LLP
◦ Cardiff, Cardiff County
◦ £14k – £14k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWLegal Counsel & Assistant Company Secretary
BCL Legal In-House
◦ Manchester, Greater Manchester
◦ £70k – £80k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWLegal Assistant, North London
Morgan Hunt Recruitment
◦ London, UK · Hybrid
◦ £58k – £58k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWResidential Property Legal Assistant
Edwards & Pearce, Doncaster
◦ York, North Yorkshire
◦ £25k – £29k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWResidential Conveyancing Legal Assistant
Reed
◦ Reading, Berkshire · Hybrid
◦ £26k – £36k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWCommercial Property Legal Secretary
Law Staff Ltd
◦ Basingstoke, Hampshire
◦ £28k – £32k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWTrainee Legal Assistant, Family Law
QED Legal Recruitment
◦ Leeds, West Yorkshire
◦ £22k – £25k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
NEWParalegal, Litigation Team
Government Legal Department
◦ London, UK · Hybrid
◦ £30k – £34k
♡ Save⊘ HideView & Apply
My Applications
Drag and drop applications between columns to update their status.
+ Add External‹ Browse Jobs
Saved3
Legal Assistant, Private ClientClear Legal & Financial
Legal Assistant / ReceptionistReed
Legal Secretary / AssistantOffice Angels
Applied4
Legal AssistantOffice Angels
Legal AssistantReed
Legal Assistant, ResidentialENL
Interview1
Commercial Property Legal…Law Staff Ltd
Offer1
Legal Secretary / AssistantOffice Angels
Rejected0
Drop here
+ New Chat
Explain the postal ruleJust now
summarise this document in a…11 Jun
What are the elements of promis…11 Jun
Explain the neighbour principle fr…11 Jun
Summarise the Caparo three-par…6 Jun
Is a display of goods an offer or…2 Jun
New conversation27 May
Hi, I'm Obiter AI. I can help with cases, statutes, exam technique, problem questions, CVs and anything else a law student's day throws up.
When is acceptance by post effective?

⚖ CaseBrief · Adams v Lindsell (1818) 1 B & Ald 681
⊕  Ask anything...
Obiter AI can make mistakes. Always verify answers against primary sources before relying on them.
How it works

AI that never
hallucinates.

Every AI tool in Obiter draws from a verified database of UK law, not the open web. No hallucinated cases, no invented statutes.

01

A verified database

Every case is pre-briefed, researched and verified against primary sources. No scraping, no AI-generated source material.

02

AI grounded in real law

SBAQs, essay questions and flashcards draw exclusively from this verified database, citing real cases and real statutes.

03

Zero hallucinations

Because every response is anchored to verified data, you never get made-up cases or invented rules. Accuracy comes from the database, the AI just makes it faster.

Obiter in numbers

Built like it matters.

0UK cases pre-briefed and verified against primary sources
0exam-grade SBAQs written across core modules
0essay and problem questions with model answers
0hallucinated authorities. Ever. That's the whole point.
From our users
Super impressed by Obiter. Really sad it wasn't around while I was at uni or studying the SQE, but happy for future law students. The software is seamless and well thought out.
Anya, Trainee Solicitor
I legitimately miss it for the year I just completed without it. I'll definitely be using it for the SQE and careers.
Isabel, PGDL student
I can't think of only one best thing, it's really the whole package. If I had to pick one word it would be organised. Obiter has everything a law student needs to stay focused and on track.
Aysha, PGDL student
Pricing

Simple, student-friendly pricing.

Start free, upgrade when you're ready.
No hidden fees. No commitments.

Free
Everything you need to get started.
£0
  • Dashboard, calendar & study timer
  • Manual flashcards
  • Statute search
  • Bulletin, legal news
Get started free
Pro
Unlimited everything for exam season.
£19.99 /mo
  • Everything in Standard
  • Unlimited SBAQs, essays & AI
  • Unlimited AI flashcard sets
  • Priority support
Choose Pro
Questions

Frequently
asked.

Can't find what you're after? Get in touch.

01Is Obiter legal advice? +

No, Obiter is a study platform for law students. It helps you learn and revise the law; it doesn't advise on real-world legal problems.

02Which qualifications does it cover? +

The LLB, GDL/PGDL and SQE preparation, with module coverage across core UK subjects.

03What does the free tier actually include? +

Dashboard, calendar and study timer, manual flashcards, statute search and the Bulletin, free forever, no card required.

04Does the AI make things up? +

No. Every AI feature draws exclusively from Obiter's verified database of UK law, over 5,000 pre-briefed cases, so it cites real authorities, never inventions.

Start today

Study law smarter,
starting today.

Download Obiter for Mac or Windows, or open it in your browser. Free to start, no card required.

Free to start · 7-day Pro trial · No card required