Headlines – Page 1354
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Should judges encroach upon the political arena?
‘Traditionally judges have kept their mouths shut and not entered the arena of the administration of justice or policy matters,’ noted Mr Justice Coleridge in his candid, compelling and at times caustic speech to the Association of Lawyers for Children.
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Immigration
Asylum - Asylum seekers - Persecution (1) RT (Zimbabwe) (2) SM (Zimbabwe) (3) DM (Zimbabwe) (4) AM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Carnwath, Lloyd, Sullivan): 18 November 2010 ...
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Shopping for legal advice at QualitySolicitors: a postscript
It is slightly more than two weeks since I visited QualitySolicitors Freeman Harris in the Lewisham Shopping Centre in London. As a result of this trip, the firm has taken on one of my cases: a dispute with the police over a Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority award. That is to ...
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Civil procedure
Discrimination – Equality and Human Rights Commission – Lay assessors S Deman v Commission for Equality and Human Rights and others: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Sedley, Moses): 6 November 2010 ...
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Clients keep legal spending in-house
Commercial firms are competing in a static market as large clients grow their in-house legal teams rather than turn to external firms to deal with an increasing workload, research seen exclusively by the Gazette has indicated. An annual benchmarking survey of 124 heads of legal ...
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Injunctions and protecting private information
Adakini Ntuli v Howard Donald [2010] EWCA Civ 1276 – ‘Why shud I continue 2 suffer financially 4 the sake of loyalty when selling my story will sort my life out?’
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The benefits of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme
The last 12 months have been very difficult for conveyancers. They have faced low volumes of transactions caused by ‘mortgage famine’, and consumer anxiety about the economy generally. This has been exacerbated by estate agents’ increasingly aggressive attitude towards referral fees.
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ProcureCos give bar 'whip hand'
The ProcureCo model for contracting for legal aid work will for the first time give the bar the ‘whip hand’ over solicitors, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said last week. The minister also disclosed that he has ruled out imposing a levy on the financial services ...
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Chancery Lane to intervene in CFA case
The Law Society has been given permission to intervene in a Court of Appeal case on civil litigation funding which it claims could ensure access to justice for many clients in the wake of the government’s proposed legal aid cuts. The case concerns a challenge by ...
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EU to the rescue on legal aid?
The government could be forced into ‘a humiliating U-turn’ over plans to cut the legal aid budget, following an EU pledge to set mandatory levels of civil and criminal legal aid for member states from 2013, it was suggested last week.
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Mexican lawyers honoured with human rights award
Two Mexican lawyers have won a prestigious human rights award for obtaining a landmark judgment recognising a new type of gender-based violence known as ‘femicide’. David Peña Rodriguez and Karla Micheel Salas Ramirez received the award from the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe ...
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EU bill set to confirm UK sovereignty
The government’s EU bill will ‘place beyond doubt’ the principle of parliamentary sovereignty over EU law, minister for Europe David Lidington said last week. He told the UK Association of European Lawyers that the bill will put on a ‘statutory footing’ the principle that EU law ...
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Personal injury ad ban appeal
The government should not rush to amend personal injury advertising rules, the chair of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said last week. In the first parliamentary debate on Lord Young’s ‘compensation culture’ report, which took place in the House of Lords last week, Lord Smith of ...
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MoJ calls for data on RTA portal abuses
Solicitors and insurers must hand over data that exposes abuses of the road traffic accident claims portal to the Ministry of Justice, a key official said last week. Kevin Westall, head of civil justice policy, procedure and customer intelligence at the MoJ, told the Motor Accident ...
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Insurers seek to pursue solicitors over whiplash fraud claims
The insurance industry is seeking to pursue solicitors whom it believes are involved in fraudulent whiplash claims, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has said. James Dalton, ABI assistant director of motor and liability, told delegates at the Motor Accident Solicitors Society annual conference last ...
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Fixed-share partner loses appeal
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld an earlier ruling that a solicitor who was a fixed-share partner in a Bournemouth law firm is not entitled to seek to claim unfair dismissal from the firm, because he cannot be classed as an ‘employee’. Martin Tiffin, a former ...
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Moses backs jury questions in criminal trials
Judges should present a list of questions to jurors in criminal trials to guide them in reaching a verdict, a senior judge suggested last week. Lord Justice Moses said the move, which was recommended in Lord Justice Auld’s 2001 review of the criminal courts, would reduce ...
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Called to the bar
The Ministry of Justice’s consultation on court closures – sorry, modernising and improving the courts – closed in September, but Obiter nonetheless hopes that his honour Anthony Bradbury’s book, Early London County Courts, is on the justice ministers’ Christmas reading lists. The ministers, Obiter knows, like to think outside the ...
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Demo-crazy
Last week’s meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid, at which justice minister Jonathan Djanogly was available to answer questions, was packed out by lawyers (even though a few legal bigwigs, including Bar Council chair Nick Green QC, had to miss out because they were stuck behind ...
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Financial crutch
The chaps at Cheltenham personal injury firm Ross Aldridge must really have the gift of the gab. Despite reports that banks have cooled off on lending to law firms, the firm has just secured a whopping £1m funding package from Barclays Corporate, under the Government Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme. What’s ...