This article addresses the manner in which accounts of profits are quantified when they are ordered against fiduciaries. Unlike previous scholarship, which has often sought to explain recent case law by reference to preconceived conceptual models, the present article addresses the topic by drawing on the reasoning adopted in the cases over a longer period, with a view to helping with the practical resolution of future cases, while also offering arguments drawn from that analysis as to the correct approach to the conceptual questions that arise.

There has always been considerable uncertainty about the nature and scope of the rule by which contractual performance is excused if illegal in the place of performance, even though performance would not be illegal by the contract's governing law. This article revisits the so-called “Ralli Bros rule” and looks at how the scope of the rule has been developed and its nature misunderstood. It argues that the rule is neither a choice of law rule nor part of the rules discharging a contract for frustration but is instead a public policy rule favouring judicial abstention for reasons of comity. This has implications for how the rule interacts with the choice of law rules for contracts under the Rome Convention and the Rome I Regulation.