Rayan concludes four-year property dispute following second trial – Singh v Singh (2026), Edmonton County Court
Rayan has secured a second three-day trial victory for her client in a long running dispute involving an extensive mixed-use property. Rayan’s first successful trial in 2024 involved the same property albeit litigating against a different family member (“SS”) (see link to read about the 2024 proceedings). The legal issues to grapple with were complex, including proprietary estoppel and the law of trusts.
Background
By way of background, the claimant’s late parents purchased the property registered in their joint names in 1998. The upper part comprised the family home, the ground floor was the family’s off-licence business. The claimant and his then 16-year-old brother (“VS”), lived with their parents in the top floor flat.
Matters changed in January 2000 when the claimant purchased the property from his parents and became its registered freehold proprietor. VS (now an adult) was in actual occupation at the time of purchase. Following the death of their parents in 1998 and 2005, VS remained in the top floor flat, where he continued to live until 2026.
The claimant subsequently sought possession of the top floor flat against VS on the basis that VS occupied the flat under a gratuitous licence which had been validly determined by service of a Notice to Quit.
VS vigorously resisted possession, claiming that he had acquired a life-interest in the top floor flat through proprietary estoppel, constructive trust and/or common intention constructive trust.
A crucial evidential victory before trial 2
Before the second trial even began, Rayan successfully obtained permission for VS’s witness statement from the earlier 2024 proceedings to be admitted into evidence.
The witness statement in question had been filed and served late by SS in the 2024 proceedings, leading SS to make an application for relief from sanctions in order to rely upon it. Rayan had successfully resisted SS’s application and therefore, significantly, the statement had never been put in evidence in those proceedings, which were of course, open to the public. Consequently, this witness statement was now inadmissible in the 2026 proceedings, pursuant to the rule against collateral use of witness statements in separate proceedings (CPR 32.12).
In the current proceedings, Rayan successfully persuaded the court that there were special circumstances constituting a cogent reason for permitting its collateral use under CPR 32.12(2)(b).
The judge accepted Rayan’s submission that the rule against collateral use was not intended to provide a mechanism whereby a litigant could advance a false account in the knowledge that a previous, inconsistent voluntary account could never be deployed against him.
That ruling proved significant to the subsequent cross-examination and assessment of VS’s evidence.
A) Proprietary estoppel: no equity arose
VS alleged that, before the claimant acquired the freehold, his late father had represented to him that he would be entitled to a life-interest in the top floor flat, subject to conditions including working in the family business and contributing towards the mortgage and expenses.
Rayan successfully argued that no equity had arisen by way of proprietary estoppel.
In particular, Rayan persuaded the judge that the alleged representation was excessively vague and could not withstand scrutiny. In accepting Rayan’s submission, the trial judge found it inherently improbable that VS’s father — whom the evidence established to be an intelligent and shrewd businessman — would have entered into a transactional arrangement with a teenager on terms which were plainly unachievable.
Rayan’s cross-examination also exposed significant inconsistencies in VS’s evidence, including his 2024 witness statement. The judge was highly critical of VS’s credibility and ultimately found that inconsistencies in both his evidence and that of his supporting witnesses “revealed a tendency to reconstruct events so as to support the present claim”.
Importantly, the judge also accepted Rayan’s alternative legal submission that, even if the alleged representation had been made and any equity had arisen, it would have been overreached by the disposition of the freehold from the claimant’s parents, acting as two trustees, pursuant to sections 2 and 27 of the Law of Property Act 1925.
B) Constructive trust: notice was not enough
VS also alleged that the claimant had been present when their late father made the alleged representation and had therefore acquired the property with notice of it.
Rayan successfully established that notice of an alleged representation was, in itself, insufficient to bind the claimant, and that no equitable interest had arisen through a constructive trust.
C) Common intention constructive trust: no evidential foundation
Finally, VS invited the court to infer a common intention constructive trust from, among other things, an alleged £600 contribution and his labour during works carried out at the property.
Rayan successfully argued that the claim had no contemporaneous evidential foundation and depended entirely upon the evidence of witnesses whose credibility the judge had already found lacking.
The trial judge accepted those submissions and rejected the common intention constructive trust claim.
Conclusion
The judgment represents a significant second trial success for Rayan. Her successful handling of the evidential issues before trial, coupled with a rigorous cross-examination of VS and her detailed submissions on the applicable principles of equity and trusts, proved decisive.
Following two successful trials against different members of the same family, Rayan has now brought a complex and highly contested dispute to a definitive conclusion, securing possession of the top floor flat for her client and bringing more than four years of litigation to an end.
