was recovered after World War II, the Commissioners acquired the remaining mining lands from the Banabans, who did not know the real value and received no expert advice. In 1948, the islanders agreed to the Commission removing sand and shingle from the beach for an annual payment. They asked for increases in money but this was not granted. Representatives of the Banabans later claimed the Crown owed a fiduciary duty to the islanders when fixing the royalty payments and the difference between the actual rate and a proper rate should be paid. Some former landowners further claimed that the Commission was liable for conversion of the sand removed from the island, for specific performance to replant the land, and for a declaration that the government was bound to prescribe the trees be replanted. Judgment Sir Robert Megarry VC held that no fiduciary duties were owed, because the term "trust" in the Mining Ordinance 1927 was not used in the technical sense, but rather in the sense of an unenforceable government obligation. The claim for the beach to be restored, from the 1948 agreement, was now time barred. The replanting obligations under the 1913 agreement were binding, but also they were limited to what was reasonably practicable. Specific performance would not be decreed because all relevant landowners had not been before the court, and they were limited in a claim for compensatory damages, and these would be nominal because the claimants had failed to prove that their loss resulted from not replanting as opposed to diminution in the value of the land because of non-performance of the covenant. See also English trust law Phosphate mining in Banaba and Nauru Notes References English trusts case law 1977 in case law 1977 in British law Court of Appeal (England and Wales) cases