Last 3 months headlines – Page 1573
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Jersey wills and grants for people domiciled outside Jersey
If a person dies domiciled outside Jersey owning assets in Jersey in their sole name, article 19(1) of the Probate (Jersey) Law 1998 provides that a Jersey grant must be obtained. Article 19(2) of the 1998 law provides that a Jersey grant is not required if ...
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Payment into court by cheque – when is payment ‘received’?
Where a party to proceedings has been ordered by the court to make a payment into court, whether for security for costs or otherwise, it is common practice for such a payment to be made from a firm’s client account by cheque.
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Criminal evidence
Expert evidence – Juries – Murder – Conflicting evidence (1) Lon Trach Gian (2) Noor Azura Mohd-Yusoff v Crown Prosecution Service: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Moses, Mr Justice Keith, Mr Justice Foskett): 3 December 2009 ...
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Sentencing
Conspiracy – Counts – Sentence length – Supply of drugs R v David Sangster: R v Robert Burnell: R v Martyn Leslie Jackson: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Maurice Kay, Mr Justice Sweeney, Mr Justice Slade): 2 December ...
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Investigating the world of private detectives: it's not quite Magnum PI
‘The dame was dressed like a million dollars and had legs that would make permafrost steam. But Zak Flint, private eye, knew it was all smoke and mirrors. He had the scars to prove it…’
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Data page for December 2009
The data page is the financial rates and data compiled for the Law Society Gazette by MoneyFacts group, the UK's largest supplier of savings and mortgage data. ...
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Dear Santa...
The turkeys are stuffed, along with the economy. And as Santa stirs in his Lapland grotto, it behoves Obiter to enquire of some of the profession’s luminaries what they would like to see under the tree on Christmas morning. And also what their New Year’s resolutions might be, since the ...
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Another brickbat in the Wall
The government certainly got a bashing in Lord Justice Wall’s recent speech to the Association of Lawyers for Children. But he also raised an impressively bushy eyebrow at the media. Wall (pictured) has given his wholehearted backing to president of the family division Mark Potter’s hard-hitting speeches on the problems ...
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Branching out
Christmas trees, like pretty much everything else, have always been subject to the vagaries of fashion. In the 1980s, it was all coloured lights and patterned baubles (chez Obiter, at any rate), then came the more sophisticated white lights, non-twinkling. A few years ago the fashion was for fibreoptic trees, ...
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More Christmas jokes
Following on from our request for funny legal cards, Obiter received this one from motoring law specialists My brief solicitors in Kent. Can you really be charged with being drunk in charge of a sleigh, Obiter wonders? And how many points will that be on Santa’s licence? ...
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Flight of fantasy
Master of the rolls Lord Neuberger conjured a diverting festive image in a recent speech about the new Supreme Court. Is the House of lords ‘losing part of itself’? he pondered. ‘Is it, the Supreme Court, losing a daughter or gaining a son? Or have the law lords simply transmogrified ...
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Swatton Taylor Dutton and Matthew Waite & Co
In our 3 December 2009 edition, we published a letter by Peter Hughes of Hughes & Company, Tring, regarding referral fees. Mr Hughes and the Law Society Gazette are happy to make clear that the solicitors firms Swatton Taylor Dutton and Matthew Waite & Co, of Tring, have never paid ...
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Missing the point
I was saddened to read the letter from Trevor Moore, ‘What is the point?’ (see [2009] Gazette, 3 December, 11). This is not the profession I practise or recognise.
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Fee freedom
Three cheers for recent letters setting out the case for liberation from referral fees. Our firm takes the same position; we also refuse to advertise.
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Notary frustration
I am an English solicitor practising on the Costa Blanca in Spain. I read Gill Mather’s article on the archaic practices of Spanish notaries (see [2009] Gazette, 19 November, 11) immediately after returning from a 200-mile round-trip to a notary’s office to execute a deed on behalf of a client ...
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Wake up and smell the coffee
I am writing in response to recent letters from solicitors who either claim or imply that because their firms don’t pay referral fees they somehow have more integrity than firms that do. Aside from failing to mention that rule 1.02 of the Code of Conduct requires us all to act ...
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Good points well made?
In response to Mr Moore's letter 'What is the point?' I am sorry he sees little point in his job as a solicitor – I love mine and see a great deal of point to it. I am not motivated however, to work in an ivory tower of the 'only ...
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Open and shut case
So Resolution opposes the government’s plans to extend family reporting (see [2009] Gazette, 10 December, 3). The government is quite right to be extending it; the public need to know what is being done in their name.
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Lessons of the recession
That well-known source of reliable information, Wikipedia, helpfully says that there is no generally accepted definition of the word ‘recession’. However, I think it reasonable to accept that it is a sustained period of economic downturn.
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To survive, conveyancing solicitors must be at the heart of homebuying
by Richard Atkins, a property partner with Taylor Walton and a member of the Law Society’s e-conveyancing taskforce The recent upturn in the residential conveyancing market has once again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses of our present system.