Latest Cases

Negligence – Personal injury. The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) dismissed the claimant's appeal in a personal injury action against the judge's finding that the claimant had not been found by him to be a credible witness and that on the balance of probabilities the claimant had not satisfied him of the account as he had changed significant details. The court held that the judge had been entitled to so find. 

Personal Injury: Quantum Case. Road traffic accident. PSLA of £2,650, with total damages of £3,294. The claimant suffered severe neck pain, moderate upper back pain and severe persistent headaches as a result of his car being hit from the rear by another vehicle. Treatment lasted until four months after the accident. 

National health service – Pharmaceutical services. The Administrative Court allowed the claimant company's application for judicial review of the defendant NHS's decision to grant the first interested party the right to open a pharmacy, although the claimant had already been given such grant and there was only one suitable premises in the village. The NHS had erred in law by having disregarded the relevant consideration that only one building was available within the best estimate of location given by both grant applicants. 

Personal Injury: Quantum Case. Sexual abuse. PSLA of £65,000.00 with total damages of £184,580. The claimant was sexually abused on a regular basis by the defendant between 2000, when she was eight years of age, and 2006. 

Libel and slander – Defamatory words. The Queen's Bench Division held that in a claim for slander the claimant had not proved that the defendant had made the statement complained of and therefore the claim failed at the first hurdle. 

Solicitor – Negligence. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the defendant solicitors' firm's appeal and allowed the claimant's cross appeal from an order made after the quantum only trial of a professional negligence claim against the defendant. The judge had made an error of principle in having confined his assessment of loss to the transaction date, rather than the trial date and none of the judge's reasons justified the conclusion that the claimant had not unreasonably failed to mitigate its loss. Nonetheless, the defendant was liable for the full cost which the claimant had incurred in curing a defect in a lease, albeit after trial, in the sum of £157,100. 

European Union – Employment. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding that, the general principle prohibiting discrimination on grounds of age, as given concrete expression by Council Directive (EC) 2000/78 should be interpreted as precluding, including in disputes between private persons, national legislation, such as that at issue in the proceedings before the referring court, which deprived an employee of entitlement to a severance allowance where the employee had been entitled to claim an old-age pension from the employer under a pension scheme which the employee had joined before reaching the age of 50, regardless of whether the employee chose to remain on the employment market or take his retirement. 

Immigration – Education. In an 'unreported decision', the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) allowed appeals against the respondent Secretary of State's decisions cancelling the appellants' leave to remain in the United Kingdom on the ground that they secured an English language qualification by fraud. There was no hesitation in accepting evidence of the appellants' expert in voice recognition, which constituted an unremitting critique of the Secretary of State's evidence. 

European Union – Social security. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, in dismissing an appeal against rejection of a claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) by a European citizen from another member state, held that the labour market-related benefits which an EU citizen from another member state could claim by virtue of EU citizenship was restricted to those whose sole or predominant function was to facilitate access to the labour market. ESA was not, on that test, a labour market-related benefit and a job seeker from another EU member state was not eligible for it. 

Contempt of court – Committal. The Chancery Division ruled that the defendant company (a nightclub) and its sole director and shareholder at the material times were guilty of contempt of court by reason of the breaches of an injunction restraining them from infringing the claimant's copyright by using, without a licence, recordings in the claimant's repertoire as specially featured entertainment at the nightclub.