Latest Cases

Landlord and tenant – Fixtures. The judge's previous conclusion that the claimant companies were the owners of certain items of property (the relevant items) situated at premises belonging to the third defendant company, led to the judge granting the claimants' application for an injunction requiring the second and third defendants to provide access to those premises so that the claimants could recover those items, and consequently, delivery up of those items was ordered. However, following the raising of a new point by the defendants before the terms of the judge's order had been approved, the Business and Property Courts considered that that new point raised a serious issue to be tried as to whether those items were tenant's fixtures, as argued by the defendants, or merely chattels. Consequently, the court revisited the judge's previous decision and refused the order for delivery up of the relevant items.

Immigration – Practice. Permission was required for any amendments produced after service of the statement of facts and grounds. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, held that the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) decision to the contrary had been wrong, but affirmed its decision to grant permission to amend, as there had been jurisdiction, the it had been entitled to reach the view it had on the merits and the breach of natural justice had not been material.

Immigration – Deportation. The First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (the FTT) had fully appreciated that it had not been enough to identify factors over and above the family and private life exceptions, and that it had still been necessary to ask whether they had amounted to very compelling circumstances. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the appellant Jamaican national's appeal against the decision of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), setting aside the FTT's decision allowing his appeal against a deportation order.

Pleading – Amendment. If the applicant liquidators of One Blackfriars Ltd had wanted to pursue a case that its former administrators had breached their duty by failing to pursue the corporate rescue objective in para 3(1) of Sch B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986, they ought to have provided full particulars of all the necessary ingredients. Accordingly, save for two minor corrections which were allowed, the Chancery Division dismissed the liquidators' application under CPR 17.1(2)(b) for permission to make certain amendments, including to add a claim of breach of professional duties. The court disallowed other proposed amendments under CPR 17.2(1), notwithstanding that they had been consented to.

Agreement – Agency agreement. There was no reasonable basis for the attempted challenge to the judge's finding that the thrust of an oral agreement reached was that the defendant would retain the claimant as its broker for as long as the defendant had a sight with the third party diamond seller. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed the defendant's appeal against the judge's ruling that it had been in breach of contract in terminating its relationship with the claimant.

Limitation of action – Registered land. The appellant's appeal in a dispute as to the ownership of property obtained by fraud succeeded. The appellant's father had obtained the property by fraud, and the original owner of the property (MR2) had failed to challenge the fraudulent transfer within the required time limit. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, held that, among other things, what made the appellant's claim good was not his father's fraud in procuring his registration as proprietor or his complicity in that fraud; but the fact of possession of the property for the requisite 12 years without the consent of MR2.

Mortgage – Receiver. Where a receiver had an opportunity to include a mortgaged property in a portfolio sale, it could not be said that the receiver would be in breach of his duty to the mortgagor by considering whether to take advantage of that opportunity. However, the receiver was not able to include a mortgaged property in a portfolio sale, unless he had asked himself whether that course was likely to be in the best interests of the mortgagor of that property. The Chancery Division, in dismissing the claimant's claim against the second to the third defendant receivers, who had been appointed by the first defendant bank, held that the claimant had failed to establish that they had breached the duty they had owed to him by selling mortgaged property as part of a portfolio. The court further dismissed the claimant's claim against the bank, having construed the first loan agreement made by the parties in favour of the bank. The court also ruled that there had been no breach or duress on the part of the bank in respect of a second loan agreement made with the claimant and the bank's counterclaim for the sum due to it under that agreement succeeded.

Immigration – Trafficking people for exploitation. The balance of probabilities was a lawful standard of proof at the conclusive grounds stage of determining whether a person was a victim of trafficking and a lower standard did not have to be applied by virtue of the United Kingdom's human rights obligations. Accordingly, the Administrative Court dismissed the claimant's application for judicial review of the competent authority's decision that she was not a victim of trafficking.

Landlord and tenant – Commercial lease – Construction – Rent review – Expert's jurisdiction. Court of Session: In an action in which the tenant of commercial subjects sought declarator that the open market rent was to be calculated on the basis of a hypothetical lease of the subjects which disregarded the presence of any buildings or tenant's improvements, and the defender pled that the court had no jurisdiction to determine that dispute as the effect of a clause of the lease was that it fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the expert appointed to determine the open market rent, the court held that on a proper construction of the lease the contracting parties did not expressly or impliedly agree that the legal interpretation of 'the leased subjects' and of the assumptions and disregards were remitted exclusively to the expert, and the court therefore had jurisdiction to entertain the action of declarator.

Contract – Construction. The correct construction of a master agreement meant that the defendants' obligation to pay the deferred consideration in return for the purchase of the claimants' interests in a copper mine, had not been triggered. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed the claimants' appeal.