Latest Cases

Conflict of laws – Jurisdiction. The claimant had invested in a fund operated by the defendant, a Gibraltar company, which had lost all its capital. The claimant brought a claim in negligence and breach of contract against the defendant and served the claim form, without permission, outside the jurisdiction under CPR 6.33(2)(b)(iii) and art 23 of Council Regulation (EC) 44/2001. The Commercial Court dismissed the defendant's application to set aside the service of the claim where the claimant had a good arguable case that there had been a concluded agreement, within art 23 of the Regulation. 

Income tax – Additional assessment. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) (the tribunal) dismissed the taxpayer director's appeal against six assessments issued against him pursuant to s 29 of the Taxes Management Act 1970 for the years 2003/04 to 2008/09. The tribunal decided that, contrary to the argument put forward by the taxpayer, there had been a discovery by the relevant officer for the purposes of s 29 of the Act. Accordingly, the appeal in regard to all six years was allowed to proceed to a substantive hearing. 

Copyright – Ownership. The Chancery Division held that, on the true construction of a contract, the claimants did not own the copyrights in songs written by famous reggae musician, Bob Marley. The claim was dismissed. 

Company – Liquidation. In 2010, the claimant, Goldtrail, a tour operator was placed into administration and thousands of its customers were stranded abroad. Goldtrail subsequently went into liquidation. It brought a claim against the first defendant, A, its sole director and shareholder for breach of fiduciary duties and breach of s 175 of the Companies Act 2006, and against other defendants for dishonest assistance. The Chancery Division, in allowing the claim, held that the first defendant was liable to Goldtrail for his misapplication of its money in breach of his fiduciary duties. The fact that the first defendant had been the sole director and 100% shareholder of Goldtrail did not prevent his conduct from being a breach by him of his fiduciary duty. The other defendants were jointly and severally liable to pay equitable compensation to Goldtrail for dishonestly assisting A. 

Solemn procedure – Time bar. High Court of Justiciary: Allowing an appeal against a sheriff's decision granting two applications to extend retrospectively the 11 and 12-month time limits in relation to two petitions on which the appellant appeared in 2008 and 2010, which the Crown sought because it wished to add the charges contained in those petitions to an indictment in June 2013, the court held that the sheriff's decision was flawed in several respects and there was no evident basis in the history of the proceedings for granting any extension. 

Patent – Validity. The Patents Court considered challenges to the legitimacy of a patent for a treatment of asthma. It held that a challenge to the patent based on anticipation would be dismissed. However, a challenge to the patent on grounds of obviousness was made out and the patent was therefore invalid. A number of amended claims put forward by the owner of the patent would be rejected. 

Immigration – Asylum seeker. The Supreme Court considered issues surrounding 'linguistic analysis reports' provided by a commercial organisation (Sprakab) in asylum appeals. It examined the appropriateness of guidance given in RB (Linguistic evidence – Sprakab) ([2010] UKUT 329 (IAC)) (RB), particularly with respect to the anonymity of Sprakab's individual analysts and linguists. With regard to the particular respondents, the reports' comments on their knowledge of country and culture had been inadequately supported by the authors' expertise. Further, the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) had treated RB as binding and had failed to give critical analysis to the particular reports relied on. 

European Union – Public procurement. The Court of Justice of the European Union made a preliminary ruling in which it held that, on a proper construction of art 2d(4) of Directive 89/665, where a public contract was awarded without prior publication of a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union, but that was not permissible under Directive 2004/18, the contract could not be declared ineffective, if the conditions laid down in that provision were, in fact, satisfied, which it was for the referring court to determine. 

Contract – Condition. The claimant agreed to sell to the defendants a freehold property. The issue arose of whether the defendants were liable to pay to the claimant the VAT charge on that transaction. A summary judgment application by the claimant was allowed. An appeal by the defendants was allowed. The claimants appealed. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and held that it could be said that the parties intended that nothing was or could become payable by the defendants over and above the specified purchase price of £130,000. 

Practice – Striking out. The first defendant newspaper published sensationalist stories about the claimants' arrests in separate incidents. The claimants issued proceedings, alleging infringement of privacy and confidentiality. The first defendant applied to strike out the claims on grounds including that the proceedings concerned damage to reputation and should only have been brought in defamation, which were statute-barred or an abuse of process. The Chancery Division, in dismissing the applications, held that the first defendant had not established that it was sufficiently plain that a claim based on damage to reputation could only be brought in defamation.