Last 3 months headlines – Page 1328

  • News

    Secrets and lies

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    One might have thought that the proposal for ‘secret trials’ reported in last week’s Law Society Gazette would have prompted something rather stronger than the article which appeared in the 8 March issue.

  • News

    Employment

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Employment tribunal - Procedure - Hearing - Adjournment O’Cathail v Transport for London: EAT (Judge Richardson, Mr A Harris and Mr J Rivers): 13 January 2012 The employee was employed ...

  • News

    Criminal

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Trial - Retrial - Application to quash acquittal of acquitted person and for retrial R v B: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, Mrs Justice Macur, Mr Justice Saunders): 29 February 2012 ...

  • News

    Immigration

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Appeal - Deportation - Appeal against deportation on national security grounds W (Algeria) and another v Secretary of State for the Home Department; PP (Algeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; Z (Algeria) and others v ...

  • News

    CPS commits to serving paper files

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has pledged to continue serving paper documents to defence solicitors amid concerns about its plan to go digital from April. However, the Law Society said this week that criminal solicitors will continue to face ‘financial and regulatory risks’ in preparing ...

  • News

    Civil court group anger over Salford system

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    A body whose membership spends around £49m a year in the civil courts has questioned why the new centralised facility to handle money claims in civil cases was launched earlier this week without its long-awaited payment by account (PbA) electronic system. The vice chair of the ...

  • News

    Sole practitioners 'unthreatened' by ABSs

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Alternative business structures are more of an opportunity than a threat to sole practitioners, whose numbers are back to pre-recession levels, leaders in the sector have told the Gazette. Latest figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show there were 3,568 sole practitioners in February - ...

  • News

    'One-size' Jackson-style reforms wrong, Scots told

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Scottish legislators have been warned not to simply ‘bolt on’ reforms from south of the border in their Jackson-style review of civil litigation. A public consultation closed last Friday on an 18-month review of the Scottish civil litigation system being carried out by Sheriff Principal ...

  • News

    HSE postpones cost recovery plan

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    The Health and Safety Executive has postponed the launch of its new cost recovery scheme for at least six months. The organisation planned to launch the Fee for Intervention scheme next month to recover costs from health and safety offenders. The money was to cover the ...

  • News

    Erasure

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Disciplinary committee - Erasure of name from registry - Panel finding appellant carrying out programme of investigation without ethics committee approval Walker-Smith v General Medical Council: QBD (Admin) (Mr Justice Mitting): 7 March 2012 ...

  • News

    Disclosure

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Pre-trial or post-judgment relief - Disclosure of documents - Orders being made in phone-hacking case limiting disclosure of court documents Various Claimants v News Group Newspapers Ltd and another: ChD (Mr Justice Vos): 27 February 2012 ...

  • News

    Revised FIT hit in solar plexus

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Government plans to amend the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) scheme were ­torpedoed again on 25 January, this time by the Court of Appeal. The scheme had already taken a first instance hit before Christmas with the judgment of Mitting J. However, following the Court of Appeal’s judgment, and while former energy ...

  • News

    Closing QS member blames Jackson

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    A two-partner member of the QualitySolicitors network has blamed its closure on the Jackson reforms and the ‘spectre’ of reduced fees for personal injury claims. QualitySolicitors Carters, which carried out personal injury and clinical negligence work, ceased trading at the end of February. The 10-year-old Peterborough ...

  • News

    ECHR withdrawal ‘gift to Putin’

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Britain’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights in favour of a British bill of rights would be Vladimir Putin’s ‘best present ever’, an East European delegate at a Council of Europe event for lawyers told the Gazette last weekend.

  • News

    Sports law: rules of the game

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    The complex web of commercial and regulatory issues that surrounds sport is occupying an ever-increasing amount of lawyers’ time. That was evident at the Law Society’s Sports Law Conference, held at Chancery Lane last week. It may be true that, as Charles Russell partner Simon Johnson told the conference, ‘a ...

  • News

    Firms must cut staff, warns RBS

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    Law firms may have to cut thousands more solicitors to restore profits to pre-2008 levels, according to Royal Bank of Scotland’s 2012 review of the legal profession. The report says that at least 5% of fee-earners may have to be culled.

  • News

    Many contributions offer fresh and original insights on the topics to hand

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    One of the more gratifying aspects of the development of the Gazette’s website in the last three years has been the democratisation of comment on our content. Some readers may still not be aware there are comment threads on news stories. Many contributions offer fresh and original insights on the ...

  • News

    UK lawyers leading Camp Ashraf challenge

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    by Hossein Abedini, a member of parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance At a glance one might ask why UK lawyers are doing all they can to help 3,400 Iranian refugees in a camp based some 3,000 miles away in Iraq. The two groups are not ...

  • News

    Breaking the silence

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    It is perhaps ironic that a lecture by a judge on when it might be appropriate for judges to speak to reporters should have remained unnoticed by reporters until two weeks after it was delivered.

  • News

    MPs call for review of legal aid cuts

    2012-03-22T00:00:00Z

    The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has added its voice to calls for an independent assessment of the impact of the government’s cuts to legal aid. In a hard-hitting report on Ministry of Justice finances, the committee said the government’s own impact assessment ‘has ...