Fiduciary duty

“ A comparison of respondents' action to 18th-century causes of action leaves the jury trial question in equipoise, because it reveals that this action presents both equitable and legal issues. The duty of fair representation claim is comparable to an equitable action by a trust beneficiary against a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty. ”

“ The implication of a trust is the implication of every duty proper to a trust. Equity has its distinctive standards of fidelity and honor, higher at times than the standards of the market place. Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 468, 164 N.E. 545, 62 A.L.R. 1. Whoever is a fiduciary or in conscience chargeable as a fiduciary is expected to live up to them.
4. The ruling of the trial court whereby the highest value of the property up to the time of the decree was made the measure of the recovery was not harmful to the defendant. ”

“ Since a director is vested with the responsibility for the management of the affairs of the corporation, he must execute that duty with the recognition that he acts on behalf of others. Such obligation does not tolerate faithlessness or self-dealing. But fulfillment of the fiduciary function requires more than the mere absence of bad faith or fraud. Representation of the financial interests of others imposes on a director an affirmative duty to protect those interests and to proceed with a critical eye in assessing information of the type and under the circumstances present here. ”

“ He is somebody that owes a duty higher than a mere contractual obligation, a duty involving something of trust and confidence. A trustee is a fiduciary, so is an agent. A director or officer of a corporation is a fiduciary, and any dealing in which a fiduciary violates his duty to the person for whom he is fiduciary is illegal, and any agreement for such a violation is an illegal contract. It is illegal for a trustee to bargain for any advantage from his trust other than his regular compensation. ”

“ From the nature of magistracy it may be argued thus, That power which is properly neither parental, nor marital, nor masterly and despotic, over the subjects, persons, and goods, but only fiduciary, and by way of trust, is more to be resisted than that which is properly so; but that power which is properly so, that is parental power, and marital, and masterly, may be resisted in many cases; Therefore, that power which is not so properly, but only fiduciary is more to be resisted. ”

“ The cases enumerated, 'the defalcation of a public officer,' 'executor,' 'administrator,' 'guardian,' or 'trustee,' are not cases of implied, but special, trusts, and the 'other fiduciary capacity' mentioned, must mean the same class of trusts. ”

“ The same doctrine has been applied to the directors of a private corporation, charged with duties of a fiduciary character to private parties, on the view that it is public policy to secure fidelity in the discharge of such duties. ”

“ But one who undertakes to act as a judge in his own case or, what amounts to the same thing, in the case of his own department, should be under some fiduciary obligation to the position which he assumes. ”

“ It is a well established principle of equity that a third party who pays money to a fiduciary for the benefit of the beneficiary, with knowledge that the fiduciary intends to misappropriate the money or otherwise be false to his trust, is a participant in the breach of trust and liable therefor to the beneficiary. ”

“ A factor is not, therefore, within the act.' It cannot be doubted that an element of a fiduciary nature enters into the obligation of the factor,-an element different from that which exists in case of vendor and purchaser. There is a confidence beyond that in the capacity and willingness of a debtor to pay,-there is a reliance of a principal on his agent, a confidence that the agent will do as his principal directs, and be loyal to the duties springing from such relation. ”

“ If it be for the sake of the inferior that the power is established, the superior is termed a guardian; and the inferior his ward: and the power, being thereby coupled with a trust, may be termed a fiduciary one. If for the sake of a third party, the superior may be termed a superintendent; and the inferior his subordinate. This third party will either be an assignable individual or set of individuals, or a set of unassignable individuals. In this latter case the trust is either a public or a semi-public one: and the condition which it constitutes is not of the domestic, but of the civil kind. ”

“ Some people say they like to have an official or an employe act as if he owned the property. I would not. A man will ride his own horse to death. When acting as trustee, guardian, or fiduciary, he will perhaps conserve the property entrusted to his charge more carefully than if it were his own. ”

“ He who is in such a fiduciary position cannot serve himself first and his cestuis second. He cannot manipulate the affairs of his corporation to their detriment and in disregard of the standards of common decency and honesty. ”

“ The Congress made clear that 'disregard of trust relationships by those whom the law should regard as fiduciaries, are all a single seamless web' along with manipulation, investor's ignorance, and the like. ”

“ A holding company, as well as others in dominating or controlling positions (Pepper v. Litton, 308 U.S. 295, 60 S.Ct. 238, 84 L.Ed. 281) , has fiduciary duties to security holders of its system which will be strictly enforced. ”

“ Directors and managers, if not technically trustees, occupy positions of a fiduciary nature, and nothing in the Federal Constitution prohibits a state from imposing on them the strictest measure of responsibility, liability and accountability, either as a condition of assuming office or as a consequence of holding it. ”

“ The duty of fair representation is thus akin to the duty owed by other fiduciaries to their beneficiaries. For example, some Members of the Court have analogized the duty a union owes to the employees it represents to the duty a trustee owes to trust beneficiaries. ”

“ It is a well-settled rule that a trustee can make no profit out of his trust. The rule in such cases springs from his duty to protect the interests of the estate, and not to permit his personal interest to in any wise conflict with his duty in that respect. ”

“ When one voluntarily takes the position of trustee or director of a corporation, good faith, exact justice, and public policy unite in requiring of him such degree of care and prudence, and it is a gross breach of duty crassa neglegentia-not to bestow them.' Ackerman v. ”

“ The highest interests are placed in their hands, and confided to their management. The confidence which they receive and the responsibilities which they are obliged to assume demand not only ability of a high order, but the strictest integrity. ”

“ The standard of duty is no different whether the trust to be enforced is actual or constructive. United States v. Dunn, supra; Independent Coal & Coke Co. v. United States, supra; Newton v. Porter, supra. ”

“ If it be taken as sufficient, the shareholders who voted for it are not chargeable with notice that fiduciary powers would later be perverted by the award to the fiduciary of extraordinary benefits. Consent will not protect if reason and moderation are not made to mark the boundaries of what is done under its shelter. ”

“ In fidelity to their oaths and to the obligations they assume, they must do all that reasonably prudent and careful men ought to do for the protection of the interests of others intrusted to their charge. ”

“ That a trustee, by whose negligence of a plain duty the property in his hands is wasted or injured, is chargeable with the loss, is a doctrine which pervades the whole law of trusts. And it is the only doctrine which will insure fidelity in trustees and protection to the interests of cestuis que trust. ”

“ The executor's duty is to reduce the property to cash and distribute it to the proper parties. All these officers owe the same duty of fidelity to their beneficiary that an agent owes to his principal. There is the same duty to execute the trust personally and not delegate authority, except in regard to ministerial or mechanical acts. ”

“ Now, generally, it will be impossible to define, with any degree of accuracy, what the objects of the trust are to be; and it is always impossible to define the duties of the trustees and the methods to be employed by them in managing their business. ”

“ But that practice, in contradiction to this principle, proceeds upon the presumption, that the responsibility of those who appoint, for the fitness and competency of the persons on whom they bestow their choice, and the interest they will have in the respectable and prosperous administration of affairs, will inspire a sufficient disposition to dismiss from a share in it all such, who, by their conduct, shall have proved themselves unworthy of the confidence reposed in them. ”

“ In regard to deeding over your property, no one compels you to do it. I do not compel you to do it, the Trustee in Trust does not, God does not; but He says that if you will do this, that and the other thing which He has counselled for our good, do so, and prove Him. He goes to work and proves us, as we go to work and prove one another under various circumstances. ”

“ You can't play the races and give wine dinners and maintain strong confidence with your creditors.
You must be worthy of the confidence reposed in you. It is your duty and part of the contract to be reliable and truthful. ”

“ Such a notion can be entertained only through a confusion of duty on the part of those who direct medicine. Their business is the public safety; and the position of their profession is their business only so far as it affects this. Trusts are intended for the benefit of any one rather than the trustee. ”

“ If the individual is satisfied with the trustees, and sees nothing to object to in the proposed system of management, and if the prospect of increased profits is sufficiently great to make him willing to part with his inalienable right of doing what he will with his own, such a trust may justify itself to his judgment. ”

“ Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees. ”

“ Rather than sacrifice his own ease or his own interests, he violates the obligation which he has undertaken and brings inconvenience, or possibly disaster, to those whose interests he has bound himself to protect. But the demands of the trust may become so excessive as to tax the time and pains of the trustee to a far greater extent than could ever have been anticipated, and to interfere seriously with his other employments. ”

“ In the commission of every trust there is an implied tribute to the integrity and intelligence of the trustee, and there is also an implied call for the faithful exercise of those properties to the fulfilment of the purposes of the trust. The tribute and the call acquire additional force and energy when the trust is committed for performance after the decease of him by whom it is granted; when he no longer lives to constrain the effective fulfilment of his design. ”

“ Give responsibility . . even if you give it for your own discredit. What's beneath trust deeds and last wills and testaments, and even acts of Parliament and official creeds? Fear of the verdict of the next generation . . fear of looking foolish in their eyes. ”

“ The distinction between a power and a trust is marked and obvious. Powers, as Chief Justice Wilmot observed, are never imperative; they leave the act to be done at the will of the party to whom they are given. Trusts are always imperative, and are obligatory upon the conscience of the party intrusted. [107]
Our conclusion is, that the construction urged by the plaintiffs, of the will, importing a condition, a breach of which forfeits the devise, is not well founded. ”

“ It would be absurd to make you send home the bills, and deeds, and certificate, and what not. Of course they wouldn’t do that.”
Though this was a statement, somehow it also sounded like a question, so I answered:
“As a rule they do me the compliment of taking my word. The fact is, they are, as your Excellency says, obliged to trust somebody.” ”

“ To attempt to control him, then, in the exercise of his constitutional authority, is for an attorney named for one specific trust to attempt to discharge the duties committed to another, named for quite a different, and for an equally specific trust. ”

“ I am not ignorant that many questions may be started relating to the duty of secrecy, where the affairs are of publick concern; where subsequent reasons may arise to alter the appearance and nature of the trust; that the manner in which the secret was told may change the degree of obligation, and that the principles upon which a man is chosen for a confidant may not always equally constrain him. ”

“ Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation. ”

“ Let any trust be conceived. The consequences which it is in the nature of it to be productive of to the possessor, must, in as far as they are material, be either of an advantageous or of a disadvantageous nature: in as far as they are advantageous, the trust may be considered as a benefit or privilege: in as far as they are disadvantageous, it may be considered as a burthen. To consider it then upon the footing of a benefit. The trust either is of the number of those which ought by law to subsist; that is, which the legislator meant should be established ”

“ When one deposits money in a savings bank, or takes stock in a corporation, thus divesting himself of the immediate control of his property, he expects, and has the right to expect, that the trustees or directors, who are chosen to take his place in the management and control of his property, will exercise ordinary care and prudence in the trusts committed to them,-the same degree of care and prudence that men prompted by self-interest generally exercise in their own affairs. ”