Latest Cases

Practice – Personal injury. Where a claimant's injury had not itself impacted on life expectancy, permission to rely on that category of evidence would not be given, unless there was clear evidence to support the view that the individual was atypical and would enjoy longer or shorter expectation of life. Bespoke life expectancy evidence from an expert in a particular field should be confined to cases where the relevant clinical experts could not offer an opinion at all or stated that they required specific input from a life expectancy expert. Accordingly, following a case management conference, concerning the claimant's personal injury claim, the Queen's Bench Division dismissed the defendants' application for permission to rely on expert evidence on the claimant's life expectancy.

Judicial review – Application for judicial review. The Supreme Court of Mauritius had been entitled to find that the decisions of the appellant Government Ministries had been open to challenge by way of judicial review, but had erred in finding that their decisions not to complete a contract with the respondent had been unreasonable. The Privy Council, allowing the Ministries' appeal held that they had been entitled to make a decision that the respondent had not complied with the pre-contract requirements for the provision of a comfort letter and that the respondent had had no legitimate expectation that, despite that non-compliance, its comfort letter would either be accepted or that further debate was an option.

Costs – Order for costs. The applicant housing trust succeeded in its application for judicial review of the order made by the defendant magistrates' court awarding prosecution costs against the applicant in the sum of £21,052.80 in favour of the interested party's solicitors following settlement of proceedings against the applicant for the alleged failure to abate a statutory nuisance pursuant to s 82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The Administrative Court held that the magistrates had erred by not considering the individual items that the applicant had challenged and, if they had considered any of those points, by failing to give reasons for any decision they had reached in relation to them. Consequently, the magistrates' decision was quashed and the matter was remitted back to the magistrates to be heard by a differently constituted Bench.

European Union – Employment. Article 1(1) of Council Directive (EC) 2001/23 should be interpreted as meaning that the transfer, to a second undertaking, of financial instruments and other assets of the clients of a first undertaking, following the cessation of the first undertaking's activity, under a contract the conclusion of which was required by national legislation, even though the first undertaking's clients remained free not to entrust the management of their stock market securities to the second undertaking, could constitute a transfer of an undertaking or of part of an undertaking if it was established that there had been a transfer of clients, that being a matter for the referring court to determine. The Court of Justice of the European Union so held in proceedings concerning the lawfulness of the termination of the applicant employee's employment contract.

Contempt of court – Committal. The applicant local authority had failed to prove, to the requisite standard, that the respondent, whose children had been made the subject of a care order, had breached an injunction by using offensive, foul and threatening words towards one of the authority's employees. Accordingly, the Family Division dismissed the authority's application to commit the respondent for the alleged breach of the injunction.

Town and country planning – Development. The definition of 'mast' in para A.1(2) under Class A of Pt 16, 'Communications', of Sch 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 excluded from the scope of permitted development certain forms of 'building based apparatus other than small antenna and small cell systems'. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, in dismissing the appeal of the appellant telecommunications company gave guidances, as a matter of law, on the interpretation of that provision.

Human rights – Right to a fair hearing. Notices issued by the respondent Comptroller of Taxes and Attorney General for Jersey, requesting information from the first appellant company, did not, in themselves, deprive any of the appellants of their right to a fair trial, in particular, the privilege against self-incrimination. Accordingly, the Privy Council dismissed the appellants' appeals against the decisions dismissing their applications for judicial review of the notices and the regulations they were made under.

Company – Shares. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, made rulings in a dispute concerning the taxation of a company carrying out mining operations in Peru. The court held that, while the majority of the appeals would be dismissed, certain unduly refunded VAT had not been within the scope of the share purchase agreement between the parties.

Company – Director. The claimants' claim, that the first defendant had improperly made payments to a trust, failed. The Chancery Division held that it was not made out that payments had been improperly made as alleged. Further, it had not been proven that the first defendant had been acting in the capacity of a de facto director when the alleged payments had been made. The court considered the differences between a de facto and a shadow director.

Customs and excise – Duties. The Revenue and Customs Commissioners had no power under s 88C of the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 or s 9 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 to approve temporarily an existing trader whom it had determined not to be a fit and proper person. The Supreme Court further held that a conclusion that the High Court could grant an injunction where the wholesaler's appeal rights under art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights would be infringed looked worryingly like endorsing the exercise of inherent authority to override an Act of Parliament, but that the wholesalers' Convention rights were not endangered.