Latest Cases

Practice – Offer to settle. The Admiralty Court considered an application for a declaration that proceedings concerning a collision between two vessels had been compromised by the claimants' acceptance of an offer made by the defendants. The court declared, among other things, that the claim form had not been validly served and the court had no jurisdiction to try the claim. 

Extradition – Extradition order. The Divisional Court dismissed the appellant's appeal against orders for her extradition to Romania to serve a sentence of four years' imprisonment for drug offences. She would be entitled to a retrial, her extradition would not constitute inhuman or degrading punishment, and there had been no disproportionate interference with her and her children's rights under art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Town and country planning – Permission for development. The Planning Court dismissed the claimant's challenge to the inspector's decision, allowing an appeal against refusal of planning permission for a wind turbine on the basis that the development would not harm the settings of the heritage assets. The inspector had not failed to provide proper and adequate reasons on a principal important controversial issue, and his judgments had been legally flawless. 

Local authority – Statutory powers. The Administrative Court, in allowing the appellant local authority's appeal by way of case stated, held that the correct approach to the statutory test on an appeal against a decision to change street names was whether, according the local authority appropriate respect for its reasoning and conclusions, that decision could properly be said to be wrong. In the circumstances, the judge not been entitled to make the decision he had. 

Copyright – Infringement. The Chancery Division considered a dispute about the exploitation of recordings of musicals. The court held that copyright in the recordings vested in the second defendant company, and that the first defendant company had known that it had been infringing copyright at the time of releasing certain recordings. 

Practice – Summary judgment. The Technology and Construction Court dismissed the claimant's revised claim for summary judgment in respect of an award made in adjudication concerning payment under a construction contract. The claimant could not relate the present revised claim for summary judgment back to an interim payment claim notified in December 2014 to take advantage of the absence of a payment notice and a payless notice from the defendant in January 2015, in order to seek summary judgment on its revised claim. Further, it was not unjust for the fresh proceedings to go to trial and they were not an abuse of process. 

Immigration – Detention. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant Libyan national's application for judicial review of his immigration detention for 21 months. There had, at all times, been a substantial risk that the claimant would abscond and that he would re-offend if released, and there had been a sufficient prospect of removal to warrant the claimant's continued detention. 

Injunction – Interim. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, partially allowed the defendants' appeal against an interim injunction granted to the claimants in wide terms. The defendants' draft order had offered terms which adequately protected the claimant pending trial and the claimant's additions to the draft order were rejected. 

Extradition – Extradition order. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the appellant's appeals against two judges' orders for his extradition to Poland under two European arrest warrants (EAW), held that, where two cases were being heard together on appeal, proportionality could only properly be decided with reference to everything which underpinned the public interest in extradition being weighed in the balance. Taking all matters into account, there was no doubt that the appellant should be extradited in respect of both EAWs. 

Value added tax – Exemptions. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) ruled on the appeal by DPAS Ltd against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) that DPAS did not make supplies of services within the exemption for transactions concerning payments or transfers to patients of dentists for whom DPAS provided practice-branded dental plans. The tribunal decided, among other things, that there was an agreement between DPAS and the existing patients who had signed and returned the relevant acceptance forms under which DPAS provided services to the patients in return for consideration. However, the issue as to whether such supplies were exempt would be reserved unil after the Court of Justice of the European Union had given its judgment in two similar cases.