The Appellant ("FirstPort") is a company which manages an estate in East London containing ten blocks of flats. The Second to Fourteenth Respondents are leaseholders of flats in one of the blocks, "Settlers Court", with rights to access the estate’s communal areas. FirstPort provides services on the estate, including maintenance of the communal areas, for which it is entitled to levy an estate service charge. Through the "right-to-manage" regime in the Act, the First Respondent, a company established by the Settlers Court leaseholders ("the RTM Company"), acquired the right to manage the block and took on responsibility for providing services in relation to the block itself. A dispute then arose as to whether the leaseholders continued to be obliged to pay the estate service charge to FirstPort. On an application by the RTM Company, the First-Tier Tribunal determined that it was bound to hold that the company had acquired the right to manage the estate and that the leaseholders had no obligation to pay the estate service charge. The Upper Tribunal dismissed FirstPort’s subsequent appeal but issued a "leapfrog" certificate enabling it to apply for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The appellants, SICL and its joint liquidators, issued proceedings alleging knowing receipt of trust property against SNB, the respondent, contending that a transfer of shares to Samba, a Saudi Arabian bank whose assets and liabilities were subsequently transferred to SNB, had been made in breach of trust and that Samba had known at the time of the transfer of the appellants' interest in the disputed securities and had incurred liability as a knowing recipient.
The judge found, inter alia, that the liability of a knowing recipient rested on his knowledge that the property he received was trust property and where a recipient was, from the outset, entitled to treat the property as his own, no liability arose. A claim in knowing receipt would, therefore, fail if, on receipt, the beneficiary's equitable interest was extinguished under the law applicable to the transfer and that since, as a matter of Saudi Arabian law, SICL had no continuing equitable interest in the shares after the transfer, the claim in knowing receipt failed.
The appellants' appeal to the Court of Appeal, contending that they were not required to demonstrate a continuing equitable interest in the shares to succeed in their claim, was dismissed. The appellants now appeal to the Supreme Court.