Latest Cases

Sentence – Minimum period of imprisonment. The Attorney General brought a reference concerning the offender's sentence of life imprisonment, with a minimum term of six years, less time spent on remand, for the manslaughter of his mother and sister. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division held that, if the court chose to work with the currency of minimum terms, it did not need to have regard to early release provisions. As the ultimate sentence imposed by the judge had been unduly lenient, a minimum term to 13 years and four months would be substituted. 

Immigration – Asylum seeker. The claimant Iranian national sought judicial review of the defendant Secretary of State's refusal to treat his further submissions as a fresh claim. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the application, held that the Secretary of State had addressed her task in a manner consistent with the required approach. She had been entitled to find that the claimant's credibility had not been fully restored by his further submissions. 

Practice – Summary judgment. The claimant finance company had purchased the debts of a company, which went into administration and subsequently into liquidation. The claimant brought proceedings, seeking to recover a sum from the defendant directors of the company, under deeds of indemnity. The Commercial Court, in granting the application, held that, on the true construction of the deeds of indemnity, the defendants' liability in each case was primary, not secondary and they had no real prospect of success in any of their defences. 

Practice – Pre-trial or post-judgment relief. The claimant and the defendant entered into two written agreements, a master agreement (the master agreement) containing general terms and conditions and an insulation scheme event transaction document (the document). The claimant contended that under the terms of the document the defendant was in breach of contract. The defendant denied that it was in breach of the document or at all. Furthermore it sought to rely on, inter alia, cll 10.1 of the master agreement which excluded liability for indirect losses and limited liability for direct losses to £1,000,000. The claimant denied that the clause limited or excluded liability for the losses it suffered as a result of the breach of the document.The Queen's Bench Division held that cl 10.1 of the master agreement had not excluded liability for the claimant's losses. 

Employment tribunal – Procedure. The employment tribunal, in considering claims made at different times by different employees, against the background of the employer having received multiple grievances which it had investigated, had allowed certain applications by employees to amend but disallowed others. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal's refusal of amendments to add new factual allegations could not properly be described as erroneous in law or perverse. However, the tribunal had erred in misclassifying some of the proposed amendments as new claims and had erred in its approach to proposed amendments to add claims whose facts had post-dated the original claim. Accordingly, the employees' appeal would be allowed. 

Practice – Pre-trial or Post-judgment relief. A dispute arose between the parties to a joint venture for the acquisition of a collection of hotels and resorts and their business, concerning the removal of the founder of a hotel chain and the chief executive officer of a company incorporated for the purpose of the joint venture (the JVC). The Chancery Division granted the claimant an injunction to, among other things, restrain the JVC from taking steps to remove and/or exclude Z from his position of CEO of the JVC until 31 July 2014. 

European Union – Action for annulment. The General Court of the European Union granted: (i) the application by Spraylat GmbH (Spraylat) for annulment of an invoice issued by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) setting the amount of the administrative charge imposed on Spraylat; and (ii) a precautionary application by Spraylat to annul Decision SME (2012) 1445 of the ECHA which stated that Spraylat did not fulfil the conditions to receive a reduction of the fee for small enterprises and had imposed an administrative charge on it. 

Company – Director. The Companies Court dismissed the claimant's appeal against an order disqualifying him from acting as a director of a company for 12 years. The order was not obtuse or conceptually incoherent as alleged by the claimant. Further, the registrar's judgment in relation to the length of disqualification was in accord with principle and authority. 

Value added tax – Input tax. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) (the tribunal) dismissed the taxpayer company's appeal against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) (the FTT) to uphold the Revenue and Customs Commissioners' refusal of the taxpayer's claim for input tax on the basis that the transactions which had given rise to the input tax at issue had been connected with the fraudulent evasion of VAT. The tribunal decided that in arriving at its decision, the FTT had considered the relevant evidence and had applied the correct test. 

Indemnity – Negligence. Following a flood at a recently constructed block of flats, the building owner commenced proceedings against the main contractor which led to a series of claims against the chain of sub-contractors. The judge found that the mechanical sub-sub-sub-contractor (Robson) had been liable for two defects in workmanship which had been the principal cause of the flood with the result that the Robson was liable under the indemnity clause contained in the agreement by which it had been engaged by HSE. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, upheld that decision and found that HSE's failure to inspect the work properly, even when the breaches should have been detected upon a reasonable inspection of the work, had not shut out its claim under the indemnity. It could not have been presumed that the parties had intended to confine the indemnity clause only to workmanship breaches which had been invisible upon reasonable inspection.