Latest news – Page 869
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News
ASBO appeal
I am studying the readability of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), and my initial analysis suggests they may not always be well understood by those to whom they apply. My next step is to find out how well lawyers believe recipients understand ASBOs and how far they have to explain them ...
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Data deal
City firm Macfarlanes and Guernsey’s Carey Olsen advised the PFB Data Centre Fund on a joint venture with e-Shelter, a German data centre developer and operator, to develop a campus of data centre buildings near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. It is projected to be the largest data centre in the UK ...
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AXA kicks off £60m ‘son of TAG’ litigation
Insurance giant AXA has begun legal proceedings against 78 law firms in an attempt to recover losses associated with after-the-event (ATE) insurance policies taken out on claims it believes were not properly vetted, the Gazette has learned. According to sources close to the parties involved, AXA ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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In defence of the victims
Matthew Hickling’s criticism of the Criminal Procedure Rules does not stand up to scrutiny I write as one who prosecutes daily in the magistrates’ court.
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Court calamities
I feel compelled to respond to Majid Shafiq’s ‘challenge’ to find ‘a bigger failure by a court to conduct business in an acceptable way’ (see [2008] Gazette, 26 June, 11). My recent experiences of various courts include: A telephone ...
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Silver lining?
In the light of recent turmoil on the stockmarket, there would appear to be scope for charities to gain substantially from estates which include shares in companies that have declined dramatically in value (such as banks, builders and property companies). Where there is a taxable estate ...
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Immigration issues
As an immigration consultancy based in Sheffield we recently read with great interest an article published in March concerning the quality of advice for Turkish workers (see [2008] Gazette, 6 March, 4). While we agree that the quality of immigration services is high, we do not ...
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Correction
Dr Ann Barker, the Bar Standards Board’s new complaints commissioner, was wrongly named Parker in last week’s issue. Apologies.