Dunfee

(after stating the facts as above). The ordinary expectancy of a renewal of a lease is regarded in equity as a valuable interest, and, if one who stands in a fiduciary relation to a person entitled to such beneficial interest secures a renewal to himself, a court of equity will treat him as holding the new lease in trust for the persons entitled to the beneficial interest in the original lease. This rule is well settled, and is accepted in both English and American courts. Holt v. Holt, 1 Chan. Cas. 190; Phyfe v. Wardell, 5 Paige (N. T.) 268, 28 Am. Dec. 430 .

As applied to the present case, the rule amounts to this: The appellant herein may not secretly or clandestinely take a lease on the mining property to himself, at the expense of those who became associated with him under his agreement with the appelleethat is to say, he cannot secretly or inequitably obtain for himself a lease to which all of his associates were equally entitled. In Chittenden v. Witbeck, 50 Mich. 401 , 15 N. W. 526 . Judge Cooley expressed the principle here applicable: “But the pivotal fact on which all such cases turn is that there has been underhand and secret dealing by one of the partners in fraud of…