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    I think that, even if they had felt able to apply the doctrine of confusio to our case, it is far from clear that the Roman jurists would have reached a unanimous view as to the result. It is worth noting that even in the well-known case of the picture painted by Apelles on someone else's board or panel differing views were expressed: see Stair's Institutions, II.1.39. Paulus thought that the picture followed the ownership of the board as an accessory thereto (Digest, 6.1.23.3), while Gaius regarded the board as accessory to the picture (Digest, 41.1.9.2). Justinian's view, following Gaius, was that the board was accessory to the picture, as the picture was more precious (Institutes Justinian II.1.34). Stair expresses some surprise at this conclusion, because Justinian had previously declared that ownership of precious stones attached to cloth, although of greater value than cloth, was carried with the cloth. These differences of view are typical of the disputes between the Roman jurists which are to be found in the Digest.

    In these circumstances I see no escape from the approach which I propose to follow, which is to examine the evidence about the rights which, in the events which happened, were acquired under the policy.

    I turn first to the terms of the policy. In return for the payment of each premium the insured acquired a chose in action against the insurers which comprised the bundle of rights in terms of the policy which resulted from the payment of that premium. What those rights comprised from time to time must depend on the facts. If the life assured had not committed suicide at the age of 45, the policy might have remained on foot for many years. It was a contract of life assurance in which the sum assured on death was £1m. There was a unit-linked investment content in each premium. The value of the units allocated by the insurers on receipt of each premium might in time have exceeded that sum. That would have increased the total amount payable on the death. But in the event the policy was not kept up for long enough for this to occur. The unit-linked investment content did not in fact make any contribution to the amount which was paid to the trustees of the policy. The effect of the payment of the first premium was to confer a right on the trustees of the policy as against the insurers to the payment of £1m. on the death of the life assured. The effect of the payment of the four remaining premiums up to the date of the life assured's suicide was to reduce the amount which the insured had to provide to meet this liability out by reinsurance or of its own funds. But they had no effect on the right of the trustees to the payment of the sum assured under the terms of the policy, as they did not increase the amount payable on the death.

    I do not think that the purchasers can demonstrate on these facts that they have a proprietary right to a proportionate share of the proceeds. They cannot show that their money contributed to any extent to, or increased the value of, the amount paid to the trustees of the policy. A substantially greater sum was paid out by the insurers as death benefit than the total of the sums which they received by way of premium. A profit was made on the investment. But the terms of the policy show that the amount which produced this profit had been fixed from the outset when the first premium was paid. It was attributable to the rights obtained by the life assured when he paid the first premium from his own money. No part of that sum was attributable to value of the money taken from the purchasers to pay the additional premiums.

    The next question is whether the equities affecting each party can assist the purchasers. The dispute is between two groups of persons, both of whom are innocent of the breach of trust which led to the purchasers' money being misappropriated. On the one hand there are the purchasers, who made a relatively modest but wholly involuntary contribution to the upkeep of the policy. On the other there are the children, who are the beneficiaries of the trusts of the policy but who made no contribution at all to its upkeep.

    Mr. Mawrey submitted that a solution to precisely the same problem had been found in Edinburgh Corporation v. Lord Advocate (1879) 4 App. Cas. 823 where competing claims to a mixed fund had been resolved by the application of equitable principles. Central to his argument was the proposition that the asset of which the purchasers had been the part-purchasers was the policy itself, not the amount of the death benefit. They were to be seen as the involuntary purchasers of a share in the entire bundle of contractual rights under the policy. The proceeds of the policy were the product of those contractual rights. The terms of the policy made it clear that all benefits which were payable under it were to be made in consideration of the payment to the insurers of all the premiums. It followed that, as it was the product of the premiums towards the payment of which they had contributed, the amount of the death benefit was a mixed fund in which they were entitled to participate. He relied also, by way of analogy, on the observations of Ungoed-Thomas J. in In re Tilley's Will Trusts [1967] Ch. 1179, 1189 as to the rights of the beneficiary to participate in any profit which resulted where a trustee mixed trust money with his own money and then used it to purchase other property: see also Scott v. Scott (1963) 109 C.L.R. 649.

    I am unable to agree with this approach to the facts of this case. In Edinburgh Corporation v. Lord Advocate (1879) 4 App. Cas. 823 the property in question was clearly a mixed fund, all the assets of which had contributed to the increase in the value of the funds held by the trustees. The facts of the case and the prolonged litigation which resulted from it are somewhat complicated: for a full account, see Magistrates of Edinburgh v. McLaren (1881) 8 R. (H.L.) 140. The essential point was that funds contributed by a benefactor of a hospital for particular trust purposes had for more than 170 years been held, administered and applied as part of the general funds of the hospital. The Court of Session had been directed by an earlier decision of the House of Lords in the same case to ascertain how much of the funds which had been managed in this way belonged to the hospital. In terms of its interlocutor of 20 July 1875 the Court of Session held that the benefactor's funds had been immixed with the funds of the hospital from an early period down to that date, and that they must therefore be held to have participated proportionately with the hospital's funds and property in the increase of value of the aggregate funds and property of the hospital during that period. Steps were then taken to ascertain and fix the amount of the whole of the aggregate funds and what the amount of the benefactor's funds was in proportion to the present value of the aggregate. When this had been done the case was appealed again to the House of Lords on the question, among others, whether it was right to treat the two funds as having been inextricably mixed up.

    The decision of the Court of Session was upheld on this point, for reasons which I do not need to examine in detail as they have no direct bearing on the issues raised in this appeal. As Lord Blackburn put it at p. 835, the Court of Session solved the difficulty

 "in a way perfectly consistent with justice and good sense, and not inconsistent with any technical rule of law, and no other solution has been suggested which would be so satisfactory."

    But the main relevance of the case for the purposes of the purchasers' argument lies in the following observation which he made at p. 833:

 "No other way was suggested at the bar in which the fund, if the two were inextricably mixed up, could be apportioned except that of taking the proportion which the two funds bore to each other, and dividing the mixed fund in that proportion; and I cannot myself see any other way."

    I would have had no difficulty in reaching the same conclusion had I been persuaded that, on the facts, this was truly a case of two funds which had been inextricably been mixed up, each of which had contributed to the profit in the hands of the trustees. But it seems to me that it is on this point that the analogy with that case, and with the example of a lottery ticket purchased with money from two different sources which was also mentioned in argument, breaks down. It is no doubt true to say that the policy consisted of a bundle of rights against the insurers in consideration of the payment of all the premiums. But these rights have now been realised. We can see what has been paid out and why it was paid. We know that we are dealing with an amount paid to the trustees of the policy as death benefit in consequence of the life assured's suicide. In terms of the policy the right to payment of that amount of death benefit was purchased when the life assured paid the first premium. The insurers' right to decline payment in the event of the death of the life assured by suicide was lost after 12 months, when he kept the policy on foot by the payment of the second premium. Nothing that happened after that date affected in any way the right of the trustees of the policy to be paid the sum of £1m. when the life assured took his own life. The policy was kept on foot by the payment of the payment of the further premiums over the next three years. These premiums reduced the cost to the insurers of covering their liability under the policy in the event of the insured's death. But they made no difference to the rights which were exercisable against the insurers by the trustees of the policy or to the rights of the children as beneficiaries against the trustees.

    The situation here is quite different from that where the disputed sum is the product of an investment which was made with funds which have already been immixed. In the case of the lottery ticket which is purchased by A partly from his own funds and partly from funds of which B was the involuntary contributor, the funds are mixed together at the time when the ticket is purchased. It is easy to see that any prize won by that lottery ticket must be treated as the product of that mixed fund. In the case of the funds administered as an aggregate fund by the hospital, the funds from each of the two sources had been mixed together from an early date before the various transactions were entered into which increased the amount of the aggregate. It was consistent with justice and common sense to regard the whole of the increase as attributable in proportionate shares to the money taken from the two sources. But in this case the right to obtain payment of the whole amount of the death benefit of £1m. had already been purchased from the insurers before they received payment of the premiums which were funded by the money misappropriated from the purchasers.

    Of the other analogies which were suggested in the course of the argument to illustrate the extent of the equitable remedy, the closest to the circumstances of this case seemed to me to be those relating to the expenditure by a trustee of money held on trust on the improvement of his own property such as his dwelling house. This was the analogy discussed by Sir Richard Scott V.-C and by Hobhouse L.J. at [1998] Ch. 265, 282E-G and 289E-290H. There is no doubt that an equitable right will be available to the beneficiaries to have back the money which was misappropriated for his own benefit by the trustee. But that right does not extend to giving them an equitable right to a pro rata share in the value of the house. If the value of the property is increased by the improvements which were paid for in whole or in part out of the money which the trustee misappropriated, he must account to the trust for the value of the improvements. This is by the application of the principle that a trustee must not be allowed to profit from his own breach of trust. But unless it can be demonstrated that he has obtained a profit as a result of the expenditure, his liability is to pay back the money which he has misapplied.

    In the present case the purchasers are, in my opinion, unable to demonstrate that the value of the entitlement of the trustees of the policy to death benefit was increased to any extent at all as a result of the use of their money to keep the policy on foot, as the entitlement had already been fixed before their money was misappropriated. In these circumstances the equities lie with the children and not with the purchasers. I do not need to attach any weight to the fact that the purchasers have already been compensated by the successful pursuit of other remedies. Even without that fact I would hold that it is fair, just and reasonable that the children should be allowed to receive the whole of the sum now in the hands of the trustees after the purchasers have been reimbursed, with interest, for the amount of their money which was used to pay the premiums.

    There remains the question which Mr. Mawrey raised in his alternative argument, which is whether the purchasers have a remedy in unjust enrichment. Normally, where this question is raised, there are only two parties - the plaintiff is the person at whose expense the defendant is said to have been enriched and the defendant is the person who is said to have been enriched at the expense of the plaintiff. This case is an example of third party enrichment. The enrichment of the children is said to have resulted from a transaction with the insurers by the life assured, who had enriched himself by subtracting money from the purchasers. It is clear that the life assured was unjustly enriched when, in breach of trust and without their knowledge, he took the money from the purchasers. He transferred his enrichment to the insurers when he used that money to pay premiums. But the insurers can say in answer to a claim of unjust enrichment against them that they changed their position when, in ignorance of the breach of trust, they paid the sum assured to the trustees of the policy. Can the purchasers take their remedy against the children, who are entitled as beneficiaries under the trust of the policy to payment of the sum now in the hands of the trustees? And, if they can, does their remedy in unjust enrichment extend to a proportionate share of the proceeds of the policy, which far exceeds the amount of their involuntary expenditure when the life assured took from them the money which he used to make payment of the premiums?

    These questions were not fully explored in the course of the argument, but I think that it is not necessary to do more than to make a few basic points in order to show why I consider that the purchasers cannot obtain what they want by invoking this remedy. If it could be shown that the children had consciously participated in the life assured's wrongdoing and that, having done so, they had profited from his subtraction from the purchasers of the money used to pay the premiums, the answer would be that the law will not allow them to retain that benefit. A remedy would lie against them in unjust enrichment for the amount unjustly subtracted from the purchasers and for any profit attributable to that amount. But in this case it is common ground that the children are innocent of any wrongdoing. They are innocent third parties to the unjust transactions between the life assured and the purchasers. In my opinion the law of unjust enrichment should not make them worse off as a result of those transactions than they would have been if those transactions had not happened.

    The aim of the law is to correct an enrichment which is unjust, but the remedy can only be taken against a defendant who has been enriched. The undisputed facts of this case show that the children were no better off following payment of the premiums which were paid with the money subtracted from the purchasers than they would have been if those premiums had not been paid. This is because, for the reasons explained by Hobhouse L.J. [1998] Ch. 265, 286D-F, the insurers would have been entitled to have recourse to the premiums already paid to keep up the policy and because the premiums paid from the purchasers' money did not, in the events which happened, affect the amount of the sum payable in the event of the insured's death. The argument for a claim against them in unjust enrichment fails on causation. The children were not enriched by the payment of these premiums. On the contrary, they would be worse off if they were to be required to share the proceeds of the policy with the purchasers. It is as well that the purchasers' remedy in respect of the premiums and interest does not depend upon unjust enrichment, otherwise they would have had to have been denied a remedy in respect of that part of their claim also.

    In these circumstances I cannot see any grounds for holding that the purchasers are entitled to participate in the amount of the death benefit except to the extent necessary for them to recover the premiums, with interest, which were paid from their money which had been misappropriated. So I would dismiss both the appeal and the cross-appeal.

LORD MILLETT

My Lords,

    This is a textbook example of tracing through mixed substitutions. At the beginning of the story the plaintiffs were beneficially entitled under an express trust to a sum standing in the name of Mr. Murphy in a bank account. From there the money moved into and out of various bank accounts where in breach of trust it was inextricably mixed by Mr. Murphy with his own money. After each transaction was completed the plaintiffs' money formed an indistinguishable part of the balance standing to Mr. Murphy's credit in his bank account. The amount of that balance represented a debt due from the bank to Mr. Murphy, that is to say a chose in action. At the penultimate stage the plaintiffs' money was represented by an indistinguishable part of a different chose in action, viz. the debt prospectively and contingently due from an insurance company to its policyholders, being the trustees of a settlement made by Mr. Murphy for the benefit of his children. At the present and final stage it forms an indistinguishable part of the balance standing to the credit of the respondent trustees in their bank account.

Tracing and following

    The process of ascertaining what happened to the plaintiffs' money involves both tracing and following. These are both exercises in locating assets which are or may be taken to represent an asset belonging to the plaintiffs and to which they assert ownership. The processes of following and tracing are, however, distinct. Following is the process of following the same asset as it moves from hand to hand. Tracing is the process of identifying a new asset as the substitute for the old. Where one asset is exchanged for another, a claimant can elect whether to follow the original asset into the hands of the new owner or to trace its value into the new asset in the hands of the same owner. In practice his choice is often dictated by the circumstances. In the present case the plaintiffs do not seek to follow the money any further once it reached the bank or insurance company, since its identity was lost in the hands of the recipient (which in any case obtained an unassailable title as a bona fide purchaser for value without notice of the plaintiffs' beneficial interest). Instead the plaintiffs have chosen at each stage to trace the money into its proceeds, viz. the debt presently due from the bank to the account holder or the debt prospectively and contingently due from the insurance company to the policy holders.

    Having completed this exercise, the plaintiffs claim a continuing beneficial interest in the insurance money. Since this represents the product of Mr. Murphy's own money as well as theirs, which Mr. Murphy mingled indistinguishably in a single chose in action, they claim a beneficial interest in a proportionate part of the money only. The transmission of a claimant's property rights from one asset to its traceable proceeds is part of our law of property, not of the law of unjust enrichment. There is no "unjust factor" to justify restitution (unless "want of title" be one, which makes the point). The claimant succeeds if at all by virtue of his own title, not to reverse unjust enrichment. Property rights are determined by fixed rules and settled principles. They are not discretionary. They do not depend upon ideas of what is "fair, just and reasonable." Such concepts, which in reality mask decisions of legal policy, have no place in the law of property.

    A beneficiary of a trust is entitled to a continuing beneficial interest not merely in the trust property but in its traceable proceeds also, and his interest binds every one who takes the property or its traceable proceeds except a bona fide purchaser for value without notice. In the present case the plaintiffs' beneficial interest plainly bound Mr. Murphy, a trustee who wrongfully mixed the trust money with his own and whose every dealing with the money (including the payment of the premiums) was in breach of trust. It similarly binds his successors, the trustees of the children's settlement, who claim no beneficial interest of their own, and Mr. Murphy's children, who are volunteers. They gave no value for what they received and derive their interest from Mr. Murphy by way of gift.

Tracing

     We speak of money at the bank, and of money passing into and out of a bank account. But of course the account holder has no money at the bank. Money paid into a bank account belongs legally and beneficially to the bank and not to the account holder. The bank gives value for it, and it is accordingly not usually possible to make the money itself the subject of an adverse claim. Instead a claimant normally sues the account holder rather than the bank and lays claim to the proceeds of the money in his hands. These consist of the debt or part of the debt due to him from the bank. We speak of tracing money into and out of the account, but there is no money in the account. There is merely a single debt of an amount equal to the final balance standing to the credit of the account holder. No money passes from paying bank to receiving bank or through the clearing system (where the money flows may be in the opposite direction). There is simply a series of debits and credits which are causally and transactionally linked. We also speak of tracing one asset into another, but this too is inaccurate. The original asset still exists in the hands of the new owner, or it may have become untraceable. The claimant claims the new asset because it was acquired in whole or in part with the original asset. What he traces, therefore, is not the physical asset itself but the value inherent in it.

    Tracing is thus neither a claim nor a remedy. It is merely the process by which a claimant demonstrates what has happened to his property, identifies its proceeds and the persons who have handled or received them, and justifies his claim that the proceeds can properly be regarded as representing his property. Tracing is also distinct from claiming. It identifies the traceable proceeds of the claimant's property. It enables the claimant to substitute the traceable proceeds for the original asset as the subject matter of his claim. But it does not affect or establish his claim. That will depend on a number of factors including the nature of his interest in the original asset. He will normally be able to maintain the same claim to the substituted asset as he could have maintained to the original asset. If he held only a security interest in the original asset, he cannot claim more than a security interest in its proceeds. But his claim may also be exposed to potential defences as a result of intervening transactions. Even if the plaintiffs could demonstrate what the bank had done with their money, for example, and could thus identify its traceable proceeds in the hands of the bank, any claim by them to assert ownership of those proceeds would be defeated by the bona fide purchaser defence. The successful completion of a tracing exercise may be preliminary to a personal claim (as in El Ajou v. Dollar Land Holdings [1993] 3 All E.R. 717) or a proprietary one, to the enforcement of a legal right (as in Trustees of the Property of F.C. Jones & Sons v. Jones [1997] Ch. 159) or an equitable one.

    Given its nature, there is nothing inherently legal or equitable about the tracing exercise. There is thus no sense in maintaining different rules for tracing at law and in equity. One set of tracing rules is enough. The existence of two has never formed part of the law in the United States: see Scott The Law of Trusts 4th. ed. (1989), pp.605-609. There is certainly no logical justification for allowing any distinction between them to produce capricious results in cases of mixed substitutions by insisting on the existence of a fiduciary relationship as a precondition for applying equity's tracing rules. The existence of such a relationship may be relevant to the nature of the claim which the plaintiff can maintain, whether personal or proprietary, but that is a different matter. I agree with the passages which my noble and learned friend Lord Steyn has cited from Professor Birks' essay The Necessity of a Unitary Law of Tracing, and with Dr. Lionel Smith's exposition in his comprehensive monograph The Law of Tracing (1997) see particularly pp. 120-130, 277-9 and 342-347.

      This is not, however, the occasion to explore these matters further, for the present is a straightforward case of a trustee who wrongfully misappropriated trust money, mixed it with his own, and used it to pay for an asset for the benefit of his children. Even on the traditional approach, the equitable tracing rules are available to the plaintiffs. There are only two complicating factors. The first is that the wrongdoer used their money to pay premiums on an equity linked policy of life assurance on his own life. The nature of the policy should make no difference in principle, though it may complicate the accounting. The second is that he had previously settled the policy for the benefit of his children. This should also make no difference. The claimant's rights cannot depend on whether the wrongdoer gave the policy to his children during his lifetime or left the proceeds to them by his will; or if during his lifetime whether he did so before or after he had recourse to the claimant's money to pay the premiums. The order of events does not affect the fact that the children are not contributors but volunteers who have received the gift of an asset paid for in part with misappropriated trust moneys.