Latest Cases

Immigration – Leave to enter. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the appellant Indian citizen's appeal against a decision by the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) refusing him permission to bring judicial review proceedings in respect of a decision made by an Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) in Mumbai, on behalf of the respondent Secretary of State, refusing him a business visitor visa to the United Kingdom. Among other things, it considered how an ECO should deal with a second application based on different evidence to that furnished where an earlier application had been refused, under para 320(7A) of the Immigration Rules, before making a decision under para 320(7B) of the Rules. 

European Union – Medicinal products. The Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the appeal by Teva Pharma Europe BV and another company by which they sought to have set aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union in Teva Pharma and another company v European Medicines Agency: Case T‑140/12, in which that court had dismissed their action for annulment of the decision of the European Medicines Agency rejecting their application to place on the market the generic version of the orphan medicinal product imatinib mesylate, in so far as concerned the therapeutic indications for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia. 

Extradition – Extradition order. The Divisional Court dismissed the appellant's appeal against the decision of a district judge to order his extradition to Spain, pursuant to a European arrest warrant, to face a charge of rape. The court held that the district judge's conclusion that the delay by the Spanish Judicial Authority did not prevent the appellant from having a fair trial and he had correctly concluded in respect of art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that the public interests in extradition outweighed the factors against it and he had rightly concluded that the appellant had failed to establish abuse of process. 

Family proceedings – Orders in family proceedings. The Family Division allowed the application of the local authority's application to order that a seven year old child AA have a device fitted on medical advice in order to prevent the impact of any further heart-attacks. In granting the order, so ordering the court went against the wishes of the parents having decided that it was in the child's best interests to have the device implanted. 

Water supply – Supply of water for domestic purposes. The Commercial Court dismissed the claimant company's claim that it was owed additional sums under a contract to reflect an uplift in carbon credit for devices sold be the claimant to be installed in showers, which reduced water and energy consumption. The court held that the price payable was the fixed price that the parties had agreed, without the market transformation uplift sought by the claimant. 

Company – Insolvency. The Chancery Division dismissed an application seeking declarations that the appointment of the first three respondents as joint administrators of a company had been a nullity because of an alleged prior floating charge in favour of another company. The court allowed a cross-application by the respondents, the joint administrators and Nationwide Building society, to strike out the substantive application having found that Nationwide's predecessor (Derbyshire), had had a qualifying floating charge for the purposes of s 251 of the Insolvency Act 1986, which Nationwide had acquired and that the company had never acquired the hotel in question and its adjoining land otherwise than subject to the terms of Derbyshire's legal charge and debenture. Accordingly, nothing had had the effect of depriving the Derbyshire debenture of its status of a floating charge as created and Nationwide had not been not precluded from making the appointment of the joint administrators. 

Criminal procedure – Disclosure – Prosecutor's duty to disclose information. Sheriff Court: In applications to the court for a ruling on disclosure by three accused who had pled not guilty to a summary complaint containing 16 charges mostly alleging contraventions of road traffic and regulatory legislation relevant to dealing in motor vehicles, the court concluded that a substantial amount of information sought by the defence was within the scope of the prosecutor's duty to disclose information. 

Agriculture – EU financial assistance – Damages for breach of community law. Court of Session: In an action in which the pursuers sought reparation for loss and damage said to have been caused by the defenders' breach of community law occasioned by the Rural Payments Agency, acting on the defenders' behalf, withdrawing the first pursuer's recognition as a producer organisation (PO) under the EU's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, the court held that the second to 21st pursuers, as members of a PO, could relevantly advance claims for Francovich damages and the breach of EU law founded upon was 'sufficiently serious' to give rise to state liability. 

Insolvency – Bankruptcy – Balancing of accounts in bankruptcy. Sheriff Court: In a commercial action in which the pursuer sued for payment of three liquid sums the defender had agreed to pay in settlement of three payment protection insurance (PPI) claims by the pursuer against it, and which the defender now refused to pay, arguing it was entitled to withhold payment of the liquid sums and to set them off against greater alleged indebtedness said to be due by the pursuer to it under loan contracts entered into many years earlier—in the period between the dates of the loan contracts and related PPI sales (in 1997 and 2003) and the dates of the PPI agreements (in 2014) the pursuer having become insolvent and granted a trust deed in favour of her creditors, the defender having submitted claims in the trust deed for payment of roughly the same aggregate indebtedness now founded upon by way of set‑off, the pursuer's trustee having adjudicated on those claims, the defender having received payment of dividends on the claims and, in 2012, the pursuer having been discharged from the trust deed—the court held that the defender was entitled to plead set-off by application of the principle of balancing of accounts in bankruptcy. 

European Union – Rules on competition. The Court of Justice of the European Union allowed the appeal by HeidelbergCement AG in which that company sought to set aside a judgment of the General Court of the European Union in HedelbergCement v Commission: T-302/11, by which the General Court had dismissed its action for annulment of Commission Decision C(2011) 2361 final of 30 March 2011 relating to a proceeding under art 18(3) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003.