Latest Cases

Costs – Order for costs. The Chancery Division held that the legislative regime which permitted the recovery of an uplift under a conditional fee agreement (CFA) and after the event (ATE) insurance was not incompatible with art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. With respect to the CFA uplift, the laws of precedent required the House of Lords' decision in Campbell v MGN Ltd (No 2) ([2005] 4 All ER 793) to be followed and ATE premiums were not treated differently. 

Value added tax – Supply of goods and services. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) dismissed the action brought by way of judicial review by Telefonica Europe plc and Telefonica UK Ltd challenging a decision by the Revenue and Customs Commissioners to change the method by which those companies had calculated the proportion of the monthly charge to customers for the supply of access to the mobile telephone network that related to such access used and enjoyed by customers outside the European Union. 

Negligence – Cause of action. The Queen's Bench Division struck out the claimants' case for negligence on the basis that it would not be fair just and reasonable for the defendant NHS Trust to impose a duty of care in circumstances where the defendant had just been treating the patient and not his wider family and that where the scope of the alleged duty had effectively been to inform a third party of a diagnosis reached in respect of a patient, there was insufficient proximity between the parties for such a duty to be imposed. 

Industrial training – Levy. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant company's application for judicial review of the Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2015, SI 2015/701, in particular, art 7(2) of the Order which, read with art 7(3) and (4) of the Order, set the formula for calculating the amount of levy due in the third of three levy periods. The Order was not ultra vires, unfair or unlawful because it violated classic public law principles. 

Children and young persons – Jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed a mother's appeal against an order of the court that prevented her from naming her two children (who had been taken into care) 'Cyanide' and 'Preacher'. The naming of a child was an act of parental responsibility, the extent of which could be determined by a local authority. There was no restriction in the Children Act 1989 preventing an authority from overruling a parent in relation to a forename, but that was subject to a parent's rights under art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judge had erred in finding that the authority could determine the mother's choice of name pursuant to s 33(3)(b) of the 1989 Act, where the proper route was for the matter to be put before the High Court by way of an application to invoke its inherent jurisdiction under s 100 of that Act. 

Immigration – Practice. The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (the UT) determined that a consent order, purporting to transfer the claimant's judicial review proceedings commenced in the UT to the High Court, was a nullity. On a proper interpretation of the legislation, the assumption that it would be for the High Court to decide whether the claimant should be permitted to add a claim for a declaration of incompatibility was mistaken. 

Company – Shares. The Chancery Division made findings concerning the ownership of property belonging to the claimant and the first defendant, who had formerly been in a long-term relationship. Among other things, it made findings concerning the ownership of the second and third defendant companies. 

Housing – Local authority. The Administrative Court allowed the claimants' application for judicial review of the defendant local authority's scheme, reserving 20% of all available lettings for working households and model tenants. The working households element of the scheme amounted to unlawful indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, which required the authority to amend the scheme, but challenges based on discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights, the public sector equality duty and the welfare of children were also upheld. 

Insurance – Contract of insurance. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, ruled on the true construction of an aggregation clause contained in an insurance policy applicable to all solicitors' indemnity policies, pursuant to the requirement in the Solicitors' Act 1974 for compulsory liability insurance for solicitors and the Minimum Terms and Conditions required to be incorporated into such polices. The true construction of the words 'in a series of matters or transactions' was that the matters or transactions had to have an intrinsic relationship with each other, not an extrinsic relationship with a third factor. 

Negligence – Information or advice. The Queen's Bench Division held that the defendant solicitor had given negligent advice in relation to the identification of general conditions of service in the giving of advice in an employment termination agreement. If the claimant had been given correct non-negligent advice about the effect of the payment in lieu of notice clause on the vesting of the final 25 per cent of the long term incentive plan (LTIP), the CRU Group would have been able to avoid agreeing to the vesting of the remaining 25 per cent of the LTIP in the employment settlement agreement and side letter.