Grant v Jackman: Privy Council affirms that deed registration priority applies to volunteers under Trinidad and Tobago law

In a judgement handed down on 13 April 2026, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has allowed an appeal from the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago, reinstating the trial judge's order and settling a long-contested question about the scope of section 16(1) of the Registration of Deeds Act ("the Deeds Act"). The case, Jim Peter Grant and two others v Glenda Jackman and three others [2026] UKPC 13, confirms that the priority scheme for registered deeds is not confined to purchasers for value and extends equally to volunteers.

The facts

The dispute centred on a residential property in Diego Martin. In 1979, the then owner, Mr Choy Min Sun, conveyed the property to Mr Lerrie Bovell by deed held in escrow. The 1979 conveyance took effect from 2007 but was not registered until December 2014. Mr Choy died in February 2013 without having disclosed the conveyance, and his executor executed a deed of assent vesting the property in the testamentary beneficiaries — the appellants — in April 2014. That assent was registered in June 2014, some six months before Mr Bovell registered his conveyance.

Mr Bovell subsequently sold the property to the Grants, who completed the purchase in June 2015 and registered their conveyance in August 2015. A registry search carried out on their behalf had failed to reveal the assent, despite it having been on the register for nearly nine months.

The statutory framework

Section 16(1) of the Deeds Act imposes compulsory registration of all deeds affecting land in Trinidad and Tobago and establishes a priority scheme based on the order of registration. Section 16(2) provides that an unregistered deed is void against a subsequent purchaser for value or mortgagee without notice whose conveyance is first registered. The trial judge held that section 16(1) gave priority to the assent as the first registered deed. The Court of Appeal reversed that decision, reasoning that section 16(1) could not operate in favour of a mere volunteer so as to defeat an earlier purchaser for value.

The Board's reasoning

Delivering the judgement of the Board, Lord Briggs traced section 16(1) to its statutory ancestor, section 4 of the Irish Registration of Deeds Act 1707, and to the foundational analysis of that provision by Lord Redesdale in Bushell v Bushell [1803]. That analysis has been treated as settled law for over two centuries: the Irish Act, unlike the English Middlesex Registry Act 1708, determines priority mechanically by reference to date of registration, without reference to equitable principles such as the protection of purchasers or the maxim that equity does not assist a volunteer.

The Board rejected the respondents' nemo dat argument — the contention that because Mr Choy had already conveyed his interest to Mr Bovell in 1979, his executor had nothing capable of passing to the beneficiaries. Citing the House of Lords' analysis in Warburton v Loveland (1832), Lord Briggs held that if delivery of a prior conveyance always exhausted the grantor's title for the purposes of section 16(1), the entire priority scheme would be rendered redundant. The phrase "according to the right, title and interest of the person conveying" means, on the correct reading, "according to what would have been the right, title and interest of the grantor had there been no deed but what appears upon the register".

The Board was equally unpersuaded that section 16(2)'s reference to purchasers and mortgagees impliedly restricted the scope of section 16(1). The two subsections operate independently and confer distinct forms of protection. The presence of the "purchasers only" limitation in section 16(2) cannot be read across to curtail the universally applicable priority rule in section 16(1). Lord Briggs noted that vesting assents form an integral part of conveyancing chains and that the legislative scheme would be undermined if they were denied the benefit of the registration priority.

Outcome

The appeal was allowed and the order of Ramcharan J reinstated. The beneficiaries, as the first to register a deed affecting the property, hold priority over the later registered conveyance to the Grants. The Board observed that the Grants' difficulties stemmed from the failure of their registry search to disclose the assent — a matter of administrative rather than legal remedy — and that Mr Bovell's extraordinary delay in registering a 1979 conveyance was the root cause of the dispute.