Latest Cases

Divorce – Financial provision. The Family Division in a case for financial provision following a divorce in a six year marriage considered the various factors in s 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1925 and came to conclusion on a clean break solution taking into account their pension entitlements. 

Family proceedings – Orders in family proceedings. The Family Court found certain facts in relation to a case in which a child C1 in the female public toilets. The facts as found meant that the threshold criteria of s 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 had been made out and the court was satisfied that the only order that could and should be made for C1 was a care order with a long term fostering plan. 

Immigration – Detention. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the claimant Afghani national's application for judicial review, held that he had not been unlawfully detained in immigration detention. The local authority's age assessment was sufficient for immigration officers to treat him as an adult and that had not changed on receipt of his birth certificate, the authenticity of which was doubted. 

Immigration – Appeal. The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) gave guidance on appeals against tribunal costs orders made in immigration judicial review proceedings. It then struck out the claimants' applications for permission to appeal, as no valid application had been made due to the egregious contravention of r 44(7)(b) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, SI 2008/2698. 

Mortgage – Receiver. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed the claimant's appeal against the dismissal of his claim for damages for breach of duty against the second and third defendant receivers. The judge had been right to dismiss the claim on the basis that any duties owed by the receivers in relation to an insurance claim had been owed exclusively to the claimant's trustee-in-bankruptcy, and the claimant had not produced the evidence necessary to establish his case on causation. 

Company – Administration. The Chancery Division allowed the Official Receiver's application, under s 236 of the Insolvency Act 1986, for an order that the respondent, a Hong Kong resident, was to produce a witness statement, with supporting documents. Section 236(3) of the Act had extra-territorial effect and, provided the considerations identified in previous authority were satisfied, the court had jurisdiction to require a person resident outside the jurisdiction to submit to the court an account of his dealings with a company, or to produce any books, papers or other records in his possession or under his control relating to the company. 

Practice – Transfer of proceedings from or to the Technology and Construction Court. The Technology and Construction Court dismissed the claimant's application to transfer his claim brought against the defendant in the Central London County Court (Technology and Construction List), into the present court. It was not appropriate for the low-value claim to be transferred. 

European Union – Contract. The Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the appeal brought by the European Commission, by which the Commission had sought to set aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union in ANKO v Commission: T-117/12, by which the General Court had ordered the Commission to pay to ANKO AE Antiprosopeion, Emporiou kai Viomichanias certain sums, plus interest, the payment of which had been suspended on the basis of Section II.5(3)(d) of the general terms and conditions included in Annex II to the subsidy contracts relating to certain projects. 

Criminal law – Double jeopardy. High Court of Justiciary: Refusing an appeal by an appellant who was charged with sodomy in relation to an 11-year old complainer, having been acquitted in 2009 of a charge that, between the same dates and at the same place, he used lewd, indecent and libidinous practices towards the same complainer, and whose plea in bar of trial founding on s 7 of the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011 was repelled, the court held that the act now charged (sodomy) did not arise out of 'the same, or largely the same, acts' as those lewd practices originally libelled: the single occasion act of sodomy was not inextricably linked to the various acts of touching libelled in the earlier indictment. 

Coroner – Inquest. The Divisional Court, in refusing the claimant's application to reopen the defendant coroner's inquest into the death of his son, held that the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service subsequently considered that there had been a case of gross negligence manslaughter to answer did not demonstrate that the coroner had improperly concluded there had been no unlawful killing. Further, the coroner's decision could not be quashed on the basis that he might have been acting unlawfully in having reached a conclusion contrary to the evidence.