The Court of Appeal refused leave to appeal, holding that where a party formally abandons a pleaded defence (here, estoppel) accompanied by a solicitor's unqualified affidavit that the relevant paragraphs were 'unsupportable', those paragraphs cannot later be resurrected to support a different defence (here, laches) merely because they were incorporated by reference, and the opposing party and court are entitled to proceed on the basis that reliance on those matters has ceased. The Court also confirmed that an executor who has egregiously breached his duty to distribute estate property faces a particularly high hurdle in establishing laches, requiring 'gross' delay causing serious and unfair prejudice with a causal nexus to the beneficiary's delay, and that entry into financial guarantees during the period of delay without evidence they were undertaken in reliance on the beneficiary's inaction does not constitute such prejudice.
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