Or rather how the British Courts actually define the effect of a foreign property right or the nature of a foreign entity.

This case was not cited in the more recent case of Memec, which was more concerned with Treaty definitions than plain law. Dreyfus and its fundamental principle may therefore have faded a little from our collective legal and fiscal consciousness.

Memec did not overrule Dreyfus, and it is more than worth the effort of reading Dreyfus to appreciate the degree of detailed legal analysis to which the Court of Appeal and before them, Rowlatt J deployed to determine the nature of the French Société en nom collectif (SNC) which they had before them, and to which they did full justice.  The SNC was and remains very far removed from any English equivalent.  Both Rowlatt J and the Court of Appeal refused to be drawn into easy superficial assimilations of an SNC into a partnership or other English or Scots arrangement. That principle still holds good although the unread would seek to distinguish the case as a Super-tax issue rather than what it is: a classification principle. That constitutes the authoritative basis of the process used at law - not any refiscalisation - of the recognition and effectiveness  by both Rowlatt J and the Cout of Appeal in dismissing such superficial assimilation. It is the legal analysis at law which distinguishes Dreyfus from  Memec. The latter, whilst deploying the same process of analysis, then directed itself towards the tax treaty applicable; but only once the legal procedure of analysis and determination of the contractual and other rights constituting what was conveniently referred to as a silent partnership had been undertaken. That is important as there was no partnership as to risk in the English or Scottish sense involved.

When compared to HMRC's current attampts to rewrite the law in fiscal terms to their own advantage, Dreyfus is a delight in the current European context of entity classification and taxation.

Perhaps best summed up in the words of Lawrence LJ:

"Now we have got here upon the facts, which I do not repeat, a clear finding that there was an entity apart from these partners constituted by French law, and we have to recognise that entity so established, and treat the body so set up as having had attributed to it the status which ought to be recognised over here. It does not avail to say that we have no such entity or means of establishing a separate entity over here, and as we have not, therefore we must tear down the status of the foreign entity.  Not so ; we must respect the foreign entity properly established, because it is not a mere matter of the lex fori; it is a matter of the status which an entity brings over here with it."

So watch the issue of the substance as against mere administrative issues falling within the competence of the lex fori.

As it is difficult to find the case on certain web libraries, otherwise than in a paper library, a link to it can be found here on our Resources page.