Latest Cases

Contempt of court – Appeal. Even where satisfactory arrangements had been put in place for the care of a young child for whom a defendant was the sole carer, the court had to recognise the effect of sentence on the relationship between the mother and child. A greater reduction ought to have been given in the appellant's sentence to reflect the problems that her imprisonment was clearly causing and the distress arising from those problems for both herself and her son. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, reduced the sentence imposed on the appellant for three breaches of freezing orders, from nine months to six months for the first and second findings of contempt.

Loan – Loan agreement. The Chancery Division considered the entitlement of certain noteholders to money in respect of an incentive collateral management fee that was alleged to have fallen due as a result of the noteholders voting to redeem the notes. The court held that, on the true construction of the collateral management agreement that governed the notes, the noteholders were entitled to the money.

Divorce – Procedure. The Queen's Proctor succeeded, in part, in his application to set aside decrees nisi and absolute of divorce in four different cases, on the ground that the decrees were null and void due to their non-compliance with s 3(1) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The Family Court, in allowing the application in respect of three of the four cases, ruled that Butler v Butler (Queen's Proctor intervening)[1990] 1 FLR 114 (which held that, where a petition had been issued in breach of MCA 1973 s 3, it was null and void and that the court had no jurisdiction to entertain it) had been correctly decided and had to be followed.

Pension – Pension scheme - Unauthorised pension scheme. It had been just and reasonable for the Revenue and Customs Commissioners to impose an unauthorised payments surcharge on the taxpayer in circumstances where she had entered into a scheme which had involved the investment of the scheme's funds, at the taxpayer's direction, in preference shares of a finance company as part of an arrangement providing for a loan to the taxpayer from a third party lender. Accordingly, the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) dismissed the taxpayer's appeal against the imposition of the surcharge, deciding that the purpose of the scheme had been to circumvent the rules which otherwise applied to the restrictions on the use of an individual's pension funds which were not ordinarily available until the age of 55 and that the taxpayer's belief that the scheme had not contravened pension's legislation had not been based upon reasonable grounds.

Pension – Pension scheme. The appellant policewoman's appeal against the refusal of the respondent Chief Constable of West Yorkshire succeeded, in a dispute concerning the assessment of disabilities suffered by the appellant in her work, and her entitlement to a disability pension. The Crown Court held that a report carried out by a doctor (I) in 2017 replaced an earlier report from 1984. That carried with it the financial effects that flowed from treating I's report as if it had been the relevant report at the earlier date.

Extradition – Jurisdiction. The Divisional Court had no jurisdiction to consider the applicant's application for a renewed oral hearing to reopen the determination of her appeal against orders for her extradition to Latvia to face charges for an offence of dishonesty. It further refused her second application to reopen the decision to dismiss the applicant's appeal against extradition and discharged an injunction or stay against her removal.

Noise – Safety of employee. The defendant Royal Opera House Covent Garden Foundation was in breach of the duties imposed by regs 6(1) and (2) of the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005, 2005/1643, but not regs 5, 7 and 10. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, upheld the judge's order giving judgment on liability in favour of the claimant viola player, following the injury to his hearing during rehearsal of Wagner's Der Ring der Nibelungen, which ended his professional career, albeit on narrower grounds than those of the judge.

Family proceedings – Reporting restrictions. Section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 did not apply to the judgment on the father's application to permit certain information about the case to be released into the public domain and, as the condition precedent within s 4(2), that there were other proceedings pending or imminent, was demonstrably not satisfied, it would be a misuse of the court's inherent powers to make an order which ignored that statutory criterion. Accordingly, the Family Division dismissed the mother's and maternal grandfather's applications for certain passages of the draft judgment be redacted in the published version.

Sentence – Fine. There should have been some reduction from the starting point of £600,000 to reflect the fact that the defendant company's culpability for contravening reg 25(3) of the Construction, Design and Management Regulations 2015, SI 2015/51, had been in the lower part of the medium range, and there had been no aggravating features and a number of mitigating features. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, quashed the fine of £566,670 and substituted a fine of £334,000.

Civil procedure – Simple procedure – Procedural fairness. Sheriff Appeal Court: Refusing an appeal in an action in which the respondents sought payment of money due for the provision of glass and the appellants sought to offset sums they claimed were due for faulty glass supplied as part of an earlier separate order, and in which, at a case management discussion the sheriff granted decree, being satisfied that the contractual relationship was governed by conditions of sale which specifically excluded set-off, the court rejected contentions that the conditions of sale were lodged too late for procedural fairness and that procedural unfairness arose from the appellants being deprived of an opportunity to challenge the conditions of sale and to establish the sums due in terms of the set-off, holding that the sheriff was entitled to dispose of the matter in the way she did.