Guest on the Law of Assignment, 4th Edition

This book is intended for the practitioner who has a problem, issue or case involving the voluntary assignment of things in action, either in giving advice or preparing litigation. Following the approach of titles such as Chitty on Contracts, this work enables the practitioner to find a statement of the law and then (if necessary) the authority that supports it.

• Provides a thorough statement of the law of voluntary assignment including, for each issue or topic, the authority that supports it
• Goes through the nature of assignment, commencing with a definition of assignment, before outlining and giving examples of choses in action; detailing the requirements for assignment; and looking at the relationship of assignment and other transactions
• Examines the law of assignments under section 136 of the Law of Property Act 1925, explaining its effect and requirements, and including the assignment of an equitable chose under section 136
• Goes through equitable assignment and agreements to assign, covering both an equitable assignment of an equitable chose and of a legal chose
• Deals with restrictions on assignment, covering contractual terms forbidding assignment, prohibition by statute or public policy, and personal contracts and covenants
• Covers the position of creditors, trustees in bankruptcy and personal representatives of the assignor, and the liquidator of an assignor company
• Analyses the problems associated with priorities, including those between competing assignees, competing holders of interests in shares, and an assignee and a chargee under a charge created by a company
• Considers special priority rules and variation of priorities
• Establishes defences available to the obligor under assignments subject to equities, including defences that impeach the existence or enforceability of the chose in action assigned, set-off, and right of retainer
• Reviews available financing devices involving assignment, with coverage of financing of receivables, factoring, block discounts, and securitisation
• Looks at situations where there is assignment of obligations or liabilities

The new edition contains expanded discussion at various points, most significantly:

• Concerning the effect of Brexit on conflict of law rules as applicable to assignments;
• Concerning the effect of the European Commission’s draft regulation (COM(2018)96) and the ECJ’s decision in BGL BNP Paribas SA v TeamBank AG Nürnberg (C-548/18) (2019) CJEU 848 on the applicability of article 14 of the Rome I Regulation on the law applicable to third-party effects of an assignment;
• Concerning the Business Contract Terms (Assignment of Receivables) Regulations 2018, which nullifies non-assignment clauses in certain circumstances in the context of the financing of receivables;
• Concerning the assignability of conditional fee agreements (CFAs), the relevance of the conditional benefit principle on the assignability of burdens, and the relationship between consent, assignment, and novation where an entire contract is purported to be assigned;
• Concerning the justifications for the doctrine of relation back in the context of an agreement to assign a future choice;
• Concerning the reasonableness of the withholding of consent where consent is required for an assignment;
• Concerning the assignment of the right of action incidental to property and the necessary relationship between the assignment and the property;
• Concerning the modern judicial attitude towards the ‘genuine commercial interest’ criterion about the assignability of causes of action.

This edition has added references to new academic articles of interest, and re-numbering of paragraphs for ease of reference.