DG was a life sentence prisoner, having been sentenced to an automatic life sentence for a second serious offence. His tariff had expired, and so his continuing detention depended on whether the Parole Board formed a view as to the danger he presented. The Board had recommended that he undertake programmes designed to address offending-behaviour attitudes, but he had not been able to address them because of his learning difficulties. In judicial review proceedings, Cranston J found that the iden ...
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For the purposes of determining when damage occurred following alleged negligent advice in a “wrong transaction” case damage may arise where the claimant has not received what he ought to have received even if he was not put in a position that was not immediately worse financially.
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The Court of Appeal again considered the issue of actual and constructive knowledge under sections 11 and 14 of the Limitation Act 1980 for claims for personal injury. The Claimant suffered from cerebral palsy caused by brain damage sustained at birth. His case was that his injuries were caused by the unsuccessful attempts by a junior doctor to deliver him using forceps. The Claimant’s health had been stable from his birth in 1974 until 2005 when the Claimant’s mother told him of her concerns ov ...
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Non-suit clauses. A firm of surveyors was entitled to rely on an undertaking in a letter not to issue proceedings against it in given when providing a witness statement for an arbitration claim brought by its former client against insurers. The client knew at the time of giving the undertaking that the competence and honesty of the particular employee working on the client’s project was at best suspect and that on its proper construction the undertaking was sufficiently broad to extend to those ...
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The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge had been entitled to find the relevant highway in breach of its obligations under section 41 of the Highways Act 1980, in that a difference in height, a drop off of 6 to 12 inches, between a carriageway and verge, rendered a highway not reasonably safe for ordinary traffic, even after making due allowance for poor drivers. The expert evidence to that effect was inescapable and drove the conclusion made by the judge. Previous works undertaken by the h ...
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Burnett J held that the defendant driver had negligently hit an 8 year old child running out from the pavement into the road ahead, notwithstanding her defence that she had reasonably been concentrating on the vehicle immediately in front turning left, which could have prevented a hazard. Burnett J held that the claimant had been in the road for at least 2 seconds and was therefore there to be seen. The defendant’s failure to see the claimant constituted a failure to keep a proper look out and f ...
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Counsel for the Foreign Secretary had written to the Court of Appeal to ask for reconsideration of a paragraph in R (on the application of Mohamed) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2010] EWCA Civ 65, and as a result the Court had revised the paragraph. However, it became clear that lawyers for Mr Mohamed, the applicant for judicial review, may not have seen the letter and objected to the change to the judgment. Given the unusual public interest in the matter, the court ...
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Allegation of theft against employer protected by privilege and not malicious; Data Protection Act claim fails as email not retained and not causative of pecuniary loss
In respect of an allegation that the Claimant had committed and admitted to the theft of 12 miniature bottles of whisky from his employer, BA, a defence of justification failed. However, it was conceded that qualified privilege applied and this succeeded as the First Defendant was held not to have been malicious, having genuinely believed the Claimant to have committed theft. A Data Protection Act claim also failed, the email complained of not having been retained in any accessible record or fil ...
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After a trial before Eady J sitting without a jury in respect of allegations that Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman granted political asylum in the UK, had murdered his friend Alexander Litvinenko in order to cover up the fraudulent nature of his asylum application and had made murderous threats towards another man, broadcast on Russian State Television and viewed by several thousand people in the UK, the Judge awarded Mr Berezovsky damages of £150,000 against the broadcaster and Vladimir ...
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An appeal against a decision of the Copyright Tribunal was dismissed. The Tribunal had been entitled to find that new tariffs set by PPL for public performance of sound recordings as background music in pubs, restaurants, shops and offices showed an unjustifiably substantial increase on previous tariffs.
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