Latest Cases

Immigration – Asylum seeker. The claimant Pakistani national sought judicial review of the defendant Secretary of State's decision that her representations, relying upon art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, did not amount to a fresh claim for asylum. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the application, held that the Secretary of State had addressed herself to all of the relevant considerations and had formed a view which was not one which was irrational or untenable. Further, the claimant had not established a private life of sufficient strength to lead to the Secretary of State's decision being overturned. 

Practice – Pre-trial or post-judgment relief. The claimants in a human rights claim regarding prison conditions in the United Kingdom had their cases struck out. They applied to have them reinstated. The Queen's Bench Division having regard to CPR 3.9 held that on the facts no relief from sanction would be granted in each of the five actions and they would consequently remain struck out. 

Negligence – Information or advice. The claim concerned allegedly negligent advice given by the defendant company to the claimants in relation to a loan. In the course of proceedings, HMT admitted liability. Following the admissions, the Chancery Division made findings as to the various remaining aspects of the case. 

Mortgage – Real property. The defendant valued a commercial property for the claimant which was security for a loan. The tenant of the property became insolvent and the property was in the process of being sold for a price far below the valuation. The claimant brought a claim for professional negligence against the defendant company which went into liquidation in 2012. It sought judgment for €58,400,000, being the difference between the valuation of the property at €135m and what the claimant contended was the true market value at €76.6m. The Commercial Court concluded that the true value of the property as at December 2005 was €103m and that the defendant had therefore 'negligently' overvalued the property by €32m. 

Value added tax – Input tax. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) (the tribunal) dismissed the taxpayer company's appeal against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) (the FTT) to uphold the Revenue and Customs Commissioners' refusal of the taxpayer's claim for input tax on the basis that the transactions which had given rise to the input tax at issue had been connected with the fraudulent evasion of VAT. The tribunal decided that in arriving at its decision, the FTT had considered the relevant evidence and had applied the correct test. 

Employment tribunal – Procedure. The employment tribunal, in considering claims made at different times by different employees, against the background of the employer having received multiple grievances which it had investigated, had allowed certain applications by employees to amend but disallowed others. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal's refusal of amendments to add new factual allegations could not properly be described as erroneous in law or perverse. However, the tribunal had erred in misclassifying some of the proposed amendments as new claims and had erred in its approach to proposed amendments to add claims whose facts had post-dated the original claim. Accordingly, the employees' appeal would be allowed. 

Town and country planning – Permission for development. The claimant issued proceedings, seeking the quashing of the defendant local authority's grant of planning permission for the installation of two wind turbines. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the application, held that it would have been driven to conclude that the reasons given in the planning officer's screening opinion had been inadequately expressed, but for the contents of the witness statement. Further, the decision had not been irrational and the planning officer had not misdirected herself as to the expression 'likely to have significant effects'. 

Tort – Wrongful interference with goods. The claimant issued proceedings against the defendants, claiming damages for conspiracy, and for trespass to and/or conversion of and wrongful interference with containers of aircraft spares. The Queen's Bench Division held that the conspiracy claim had not been established, but that the first defendant had converted the containers it held as bailee. The fourth defendant was also liable for conversion for taking possession, through the third defendant, of the containers and disposing of them. Damages would be limited to the sale price achieved of £7,500. 

Housing – Homeless person. The issue before the court was whether a court in possession proceedings under the Housing Act 1996 should approach a defence based on disability discrimination in the same way as it would approach one based on art 8 of the European Convention, on Human Rights and if so whether the judge had correctly applied that approach. The effect of recent case law was that where a tenant relied on art 8(1) as a defence to possession proceedings brought by an authority or a social landlord, he had to show a seriously arguable case and that the threshold for raising an arguable case on proportionality was a high one, which would only succeed in a small proportion of cases. The Court of Appeal endorsed that approach. 

Disclosure and inspection of documents – Legal professional privilege. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed, in part, an appeal by Vincent Tchenguiz and others against a decision of the Commercial Court refusing them permission to make use of documents disclosed inadvertently by the Serious Fraud Office in the course of proceedings. The court held, amongst other things, that it had not been obvious that the documents, which were subject to legal professional privilege, had been disclosed by mistake.