Latest Cases

Town and country planning – Permission for development. The Planning Court dismissed the claimant local planning authority's challenge to the decision of the inspector appointed by the first defendant Secretary of State, allowing the second defendant's appeal against its refusal of planning permission for the erection of up to 90 dwellings. The inspector had not erred, in particular, with respect to housing need. 

Immigration – Leave to remain. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant Indian nationals' application for judicial review of the defendant Secretary of State's refusal of the first claimant's application for further leave to remain. The decision had not been a nullity, as an abuse of power and the claimants had not been unlawfully detained. 

Parent and child – Contact – Parental rights and responsibilities. Court of Session: Allowing a mother's appeal and refusing a father's cross-appeal in a case in which the sheriff principal had allowed the father's appeal against a sheriff's interlocutor depriving him of all his parental rights and responsibilities in relation to a child and refusing to make a contact order, the court did not support the sheriff principal's decision that there should be contact as directed by the court, and was not satisfied that he was entitled to substitute suspension for deprivation of the defender's parental rights and responsibilities; it also rejected contentions that the sheriff was wrong and unreliable in his approach to parental rights and responsibilities associated with contact and that he had shown apparent bias. 

Criminal law – Wounding with intent. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, held, that following a Goodyear indication, a sentence of 18 months' imprisonment for wounding with intent, contrary to s 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, had been unduly lenient. The offender's mitigation had not been sufficient to have justified a departure from the Sentencing Council's Definitive Guidelines: Assault. Consequently, the sentence would be quashed and substituted for a term of five years' imprisonment. 

Practice – Pre-trial or post-judgment relief. The Queen's Bench Division in a claim for libel by the claimant against the defendant newspaper, considered the 'repetition rule' and made a preliminary ruling on the issue of the meaning of the words in an article published in the paper and online version of the newspaper. 

Extradition – Human Rights – Right to family life. Sheriff Court: Discharging a European Arrest Warrant in a case in which the German authorities sought the extradition of a Gambian national who was the mother of five children, one of whom was suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, to serve a 40-month prison sentence for drug trafficking, the court held that on balance the evidence led and the facts established revealed one of those genuinely rare and exceptional cases where the respondent's extradition to Germany would very likely, if ordered, have such a severe impact on the sick child as to constitute an unjustified and disproportionate interference with his and the respondent's right to a family life together and would accordingly be incompatible with their rights under art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Criminal law – Indecency with child. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, held that a sentence of 24 months' imprisonment, suspended for 24 months, for three specimen counts of indecency with a child, contrary to s 1(1) of the Indecency with Children Act 1960, had been unduly lenient. A judge had to arrive at the right sentence on the offences before her and to guard against any temptation, because of what had happened in the intervening period, to suspend the sentence. The sentence would be quashed and substituted for a total term of three years and six months' imprisonment. 

Immigration – Appeal. The Administrative Court dismissed the Immigration Law Practitioners Association's application for judicial review. It held that r 13 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-Tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014, SI 2014/2604, permitting direction prohibiting disclosure to person in specified circumstances, did not give rise to a systemic or inherent lack of fairness. 

Town and country planning – Planning permission – Local development plan. Court of Session: Refusing a petition seeking reduction of a local authority's decision to grant planning permission for the erection of 30 beach huts, the court held that the respondent did not err in law either by misinterpreting a policy of the local development plan, or by failing to have regard to a material consideration in the form of a policy of the emerging local development plan. 

Executry – Confirmation of executors. Sheriff Court: Granting a petition by an executrix-dative (the pursuer) to recall the subsequent appointment of an executor-dative (the defender) on the same estate, the pursuer arguing that the defender had obtained an appointment as executor-dative 'by clandestine means', namely without intimation on the existing executrix-dative, the court rejected the defender's contentions that the pursuer lacked legal capacity to bring the action and that the obligation to search for any prior appointment as executor and/or intimate the subsequent petition to any pre-existing executor rested with the sheriff clerk despite a subsequent petitioner having that information at his fingertips.