Nicholas Holland
Nicholas Holland was a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery UK LLP, based in its London office. Nick is a litigator. He primarily represents institutional trustees, private clients and their advisers as well as non-contentious lawyers in multi-jurisdictional and offshore trusts disputes.
Nick is admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor in British Columbia, and Ontario, as an Attorney at Law in the Cayman Islands, and as a solicitor in England and Wales. He practiced in each of those jurisdictions for a number of years.
Nick was previously Head of Contentious Trusts and Estates and Head of Banking Litigation and his team was recently awarded the STEP Contentious Trust and Estates Team of the Year (2012-2013). Nick is recognised as a leading lawyer in both Chambers and Legal 500 which lately noted that he is ”bright, affable and very good with clients” and that he is “one of the very best contentious trusts lawyers in London.”
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1 Contributions by Nicholas Holland
PRACTICE NOTES
Public Trustee v Cooper category two ‘blessing’ applications: test, evidential burden, parties, privacy, procedure and costs (England and Wales)
In Public Trustee v Cooper, the High Court of England accepted that it had power to approve a trustee’s momentous decision, thereby safeguarding that choice against later allegations of breach of trust and insulating it from subsequent challenge in the future.
Background
Before Public Trustee v Cooper, the court, exercising its long-standing supervisory role over trusts, already possessed jurisdiction to grant declaratory relief on the proper construction and meaning of trust instruments and to decide in advance whether a contemplated step lay within a trustee’s powers and authority. It could also, where appropriate, take over the trustees’ authority where they surrendered it because they were conflicted, or were stalemated in an insoluble dispute about the exercise of a power or discretion.
The court's jurisdiction
In Public Trustee v Cooper, a four-fold framework was articulated to identify the different types of proceedings, namely:
category one—applications for guidance on whether a proposed act falls within the trustees’ powers, ultimately a matter of construction and interpretation
category two—situations where trustees seek the court’s blessing for a decision of particular moment or significance. These are the cases addressed by this Practice Note
category three—cases of a...
Private Client
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