Last 3 months headlines – Page 1704
-
News
Call for witness recall education
Leading scientific experts have called for the legal profession to become better informed about how memory works and suggested judges should direct juries on how they should treat recall evidence. The report of an international working group, published last week by the British Psychological Society, ...
-
News
Pleural plaques threat
A government consultation on whether people with pleural plaques should be able to claim damages has been criticised by a leading insurance lawyer as threatening to undermine the ‘constitutional separation of the judiciary and executive’. The government announced the consultation last week after the House of ...
-
News
City lawyers ‘earn ten times more’
Top City lawyers earn more than ten times the national average wage for legal professionals, a new survey has suggested. The lawyer members of wealth management club The Route bring home an average of £573,000 a year – compared to the national average of £50,649. ...
-
News
France unveils Clementi-style review
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has set in motion a Clementi-style review of the country’s legal profession so that French practices can compete with their Anglo-Saxon rivals. In a letter to Jean-Michel Darrois, who is heading the review, Sarkozy said it was necessary to give French firms ...
-
News
MDPs lure 75% of counsel
The vast majority of corporate general counsel will purchase legal services from non-specialist firms once the Legal Services Act reforms are in place, a new study has revealed. Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by business advisory firm KPMG – seen exclusively by the Gazette this ...
-
News
US legislators resist libel laws
‘UK should not impose free-speech standards on rest of world’ Washington will make moves to prevent the enforcement of English libel judgments against American authors unless UK defamation laws are brought into line with those of the US, a New York State legislator warned this week. ...
-
News
Indemnity insurer to abandon PII market
Novae, one of the qualifying lawyers’ professional indemnity insurers (PII), is to pull out of the market completely, the Gazette has learned. According to sources, the insurer, which writes around £2m of PII, will shortly become the second company to withdraw cover from the market ahead ...
-
News
SFO in drugs appeal
The Serious Fraud Office’s reputation for legal competence is under scrutiny following the latest setback to a high-profile prosecution. A Crown Court judge last week refused to let the office amend an indictment on criminal offences relating to contested allegations of anti-competitive behaviour over the ...
-
News
Compensation blow for justice victims
Many victims of miscarriages of justice are now in the ‘appalling situation’ of having no recourse to compensation following a Court of Appeal ruling last week, lawyers have claimed. The court refused to reinstate the discretionary compensation scheme that the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke abolished ...
-
News
CPS trial plans slammed
New measures allowing non-legal Crown Prosecution Service staff to conduct trials at magistrates’ courts were this week condemned as dumbing down the service by a leading criminal defence practitioner. Section 55 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which came into force this week, allows ...
-
News
Report calls for data transparency
A fast-track procedure for removing barriers to the sharing of personal data between organisations is among legal reforms urged in a wide-ranging review on data protection commissioned by the Prime Minister. The review, by Information Commissioner Richard Thomas and Dr Mark Walport, director of the ...
-
News
Tax tribunal case hike
A sharp rise in the number of cases put before the two HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) tax tribunals may be a result of applicants pushing appeals through before the tribunals merge, a leading tax lawyer has said. Applications to the VAT and Duties Tribunal and ...
-
News
Practice Q&A: Keeping it clean
Can I delay accounting for and paying VAT to HM Revenue & Customs on clients’ bills until I have received payment from the client? No. The effect of HM Revenue & Customs Notice 700 is to make unlawful and ineffective the practice of a solicitor writing ...
-
News
Lack of capacity and beneficiary liability
Baker v Baker [2008] WTLR 565 illustrates an increasing tendency for probate cases to involve a number of different claims. While terminally ill in hospital with liver disease, Mr Baker executed a will prepared by his brother, Richard. ...
-
News
Human rights
Asylum seekers - Delay - Immigration policy - Leave to remain - Proportionality EB (Kosovo) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (2008): HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Scott of Foscote, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood): 25 ...
-
News
Constitutional law
Governments – Implied promises – Legitimate expectation – Parliamentary privilege – Referendums R (on the application of Wheeler) (claimant) v (1) Office of the Prime Minister (2) Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (defendants) & Speaker of the House of Commons (interested party) ...
-
News
Personal injury
Negligence – Damages – Criminal conduct - Ex turpi causa - Post-traumatic stress disorder Kerrie Francis Gray v (1) Thames Trains Ltd (2) Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (formerly Railtrack Plc) (2008): CA (Civ Div) (Sir Anthony Clarke Master of the Rolls, Lords Justice Tuckey, Smith): ...
-
News
Intellectual property
Criminal law – Media and entertainment – Circumvention of copy protection – Computer games – Copyright R v Neil Stanley Higgs (2008): CA (Crim Div) (Lords Justice Jacob, Hughes, Justice Andrew Smith): 24 June 2008 The appellant (H) appealed against ...
-
News
Landlord and tenant
Local government – Mental health – Possession claims – Public sector tenancies – Schizophrenia Lewisham London Borough Council v Malcolm (2008): HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Scott of Foscote, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury): 25 June 2008 ...
-
News
Grandee of the law wades in
Lord Woolf has witnessed ‘the transformation of almost every aspect of the legal scene’ For many people, the name Lord Woolf will always be synonymous with the revolutionary reform of the civil court code in the late 1990s: the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR). ...