The Supreme Court may revisit constructive trusts to resolve the outstanding question of whether the remedy is precluded beyond cases of unjust enrichment or wrongful acts. But in the meantime, the takeaway for litigants is that the constructive trusts may be imposed based on good conscience alone.
The fact that so many commercial matters end up being settled behind closed doors in arbitration helps explain the relative lack of public decisions on issues like this one. But it’s not just the privacy of the process that attracts parties to alternative dispute resolution, and this case will also be encouraging for reinforcing the finality of arbitral decisions.