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[1971] Ch 1 (CA). When the benevolent fund was dissolved, the question arose how to distribute the surplus money, the purposes of the fund having been fulfilled. Since the fund was not acharitable trust, the surplus could not be appliedcy pres, so the decision was between returning the surplus to the original contributors, or deeming it to be bona vacantia (ownerless). Neither prospect was satisfactory because, although the contributors had most likely regarded their contributions as gifts, they did have some lingering entitlement to the surplus. However, to hold that the money raised by public subscription over a 40-year period had to be reassigned to the subscribers (or, more often, their estates), was never going to be workable (ReGillinghamBusDisasterFund1958 doubted). Consequently, the Court held that where contributions had been made by specific, identifiable legacies, the fund would hold the surplus of these contributions on resulting trust for the donor's estates. The rest of the surplus was bona vacantia.

In the light ofwestdeutsche v islington (1996), it is doubtful whether even the individual legacies would have been refundable. In that case it was held very strongly that a trust relationship (including what would previously have been called an automatic resulting trust), can only arise where the conscience of the 'trustee' is affected. It was undesirable that a person been imposed with a fiduciary relationship when he had no reason to think that the donor intended this.