Latest Cases

European Union – Air Transport. The Court of Justice of the European Union made a preliminary ruling, deciding that the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air, in particular arts 19, 22 and 29 thereof, should be interpreted as meaning that an air carrier which had concluded a contract of international carriage with an employer of persons carried as passengers, such as the employer at issue in the main proceedings, was liable to that employer for damage occasioned by a delay in flights on which its employees had been passengers pursuant to that contract, on account of which the employer had incurred additional expenditure. 

Company – Scheme of arrangement. The Chancery Division adjourned a hearing to convene a single class of creditors to consider a scheme of arrangement in respect of the applicant company, Indah Kiat International Finance Company B.V. Among other things, it considered that 14 days was inadequate notice for a convening hearing for a scheme of the present type, which was neither simple nor straightforward. Even if the notice to the creditors had been adequate, an order convening a single meeting of scheme creditors would not have been made because the evidence adduced by the company as to the appropriate composition of the scheme meetings and draft explanatory statement were materially deficient in their current form. 

Practice – Pre-trial or post-judgment relief. The Queen's Bench Division struck out the claimant's claim in libel on the basis of s 32A of the Limitation Act 1980. Following the expiry of a stay there had been an unexplained period of delay in a case which was in any event weak and one which the claimant was seeking to expand. 

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. 

Electricity transmission – Wayleaves – Temporary continuation of wayleaves. Court of Session: Dismissing an action in which the pursuer sought damages for encroachment by reason of the presence of the defender's equipment on a site between 27 September 1997, when the pursuer entered into possession of the site, and 13 August 2014, when the Scottish Ministers granted a necessary wayleave in the defender's favour, the court held that when effect was given to what it considered to be the proper construction of para 8 of Sch 4 to the Electricity Act 1989, the pursuer's claim, relying as it did on the proposition that on a pre-existing wayleave ceasing to be binding on a change of ownership the presence of an electric line on land became an encroachment and as such actionable in damages, was irrelevant. 

Insolvency – Receivership – Ranking preference as between floating charge holder and inhibiting creditor. Court of Session: In a case in which the court revisited the issue of ranking preference as between a floating charge holder and an inhibiting creditor, and considered afresh the meaning of the phrase 'effectually executed diligence' it held that the pursuer's first plea in law must be repelled regardless of whether an inhibition registered in the pursuer's favour fell properly to be categorised as an effectually executed diligence on the two houses owned by the defender, but that the pursuer's alternative argument succeeded—ie that even if the inhibition was not an effectually executed diligence, it nevertheless ranked ahead of a bank's floating charge with regard to debt incurred after the inhibition. 

Conflict of laws – Jurisdiction. The Commercial Court dismissed an application by Muktar Ablyazov's son-in-law (I) to set aside a claim form and worldwide freezing order which had been issued against him where the claimant Russian bank had established a good arguable case that I had committed the tort of conspiracy to injure by unlawful means and where, notwithstanding that he was domiciled in Switzerland, the English court had jurisdiction under art 5(3) of the Lugano Convention on the basis that the alleged conspiracy had been hatched in England in the period before 16 February 2012. 

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. 

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. 

Extradition – Human rights. Sheriff Court: In a case in which the Government of the USA sought a Pakistani citizen's extradition for prosecution on nine serious fraud charges, an application which was opposed based on s 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 and alleged contraventions of art 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, art 3 (freedom from torture), art 5 (right to liberty) and art 6 (right to a fair trial), the court held that extradition would be compatible with the respondent's Convention rights, within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998, and was satisfied that that the case could safely be sent to the Scottish Ministers for their final decision on whether the respondent was to be extradited.