Is there a distinction between a surviving partner and a trustee?

Ontario, Canada


The following excerpt is from Beatty v. North-West Transportation Co., 1885 CanLII 20 (ON CA):

I may perhaps be told that this is a question of words merely, but in that I differ, holding chat there is a very broad distinction, and that it is important to bear this distinction clearly in view in the consideration of the case, and I may on this point refer to the remarks of Lord Westbury in Knox v. Gye, L.R. 5 H.L. 656, where he observed: “The surviving partner is often called a ‘trustee,’ but the term is used inaccurately. * * * There is not a more fruitful source of error in law than the inaccurate use of language. The application to a man who is, improperly and by metaphor only, called a trustee, of all the consequences which would follow if he were a trustee by express declaration—in other words a complete trustee * * * well illustrates the remark made by Lord Mansfield that in law is nothing so apt to mislead as a metaphor.”

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