Latest Cases

European Union – Directive. The Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the action brought by Estonia for annulment of certain provisions of Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings). The Court decided that the European Parliament and the Council had not infringed, respectively: (i) the principle of proportionality; (ii) the principle of subsidiarity; and (iii) the obligation to state reasons. 

Criminal evidence – Rape – Sufficiency of evidence – Mutual corroboration. High Court of Justiciary: Allowing an appeal against conviction on two charges of rape, the court held that what was libelled in charge 5 of the indictment (a charge of assault), being neither an allegation of rape nor an allegation of conduct having any similarity to rape, was not available to corroborate what was libelled in the two charges of rape, and the appellant's conviction on those charges must be quashed. 

Immigration – Asylum seeker. The appellants had all claimed asylum in the United Kingdom from Afghanistan as minors. Their claims had been refused and they had been granted discretionary leave to remain, in the case of the appellant in the first appeal, for periods of under one year, which, they contended, excluded them from appealing against the rejection of their asylum claims because s 83 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 provided that an appeal against the rejection of an asylum application could only be made where the person had been granted leave to enter or remain in the UK for a period exceeding one year. Appeals to the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, on the ground that ss 82 and 83 of the 2002 Act were incompatible with their rights to an effective remedy under art 39 of Directive (EC) 2005/85 (on minimum standards on procedures in member states for granting an withdrawing refugee status) were dismissed. The Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal decisions, holding that the scheme under s 83 of the 2002 Act satisfied the requirement of providing an effective remedy for an applicant who was refused asylum, but given leave to remain for a matter of months, and was accordingly, not incompatible with art 39 of Directive (EC) 2005/85. 

Company – Voluntary winding up. The respondent company had successfully appealed against a judge's order that property in the liquidation of another company should be sold to the two appellants. The Privy Council allowed the appellants' appeal, holding that the judge's order had not been flawed to such an extent that it should be set aside. In particular, the parties had been aware that the judge intended to sanction the sale to the highest bid received by a specified date and time and the fact that the terms of sale had been provided shortly before that deadline had not, on the facts, been unfair. 

Criminal evidence – Admissibility of evidence – Parliamentary privilege. High Court of Justiciary: Allowing an appeal by an appellant who was charged with perjury and who objected to the admissibility at his trial of evidence of the asking of certain questions of him by the accused in another, earlier trial on a charge of perjury, an objection which the judge repelled, the court held that for the Crown to lead evidence of a passage in the transcript, where reference was made to the appellant having given evidence before a Parliamentary select committee, would be to offend against the privilege of Parliament or, to put it differently, would lead the High Court of Justiciary to intrude upon an area where it had no jurisdiction. 

Contract – Offer and acceptance. The appellant sought to establish that there had been a contract for the sale of a property owned by the respondent company. The Privy Council held that there had been no binding contract between the parties and that, on that issue, the courts below had reached the correct conclusion. 

Employment – Discrimination. The claimant employees brought a test claim before the employment tribunal, contending that members of the black and minority ethnic group and those over the age of 35 suffered indirect discrimination in that they were more likely to fail an assessment leading to eligibility for promotion. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, in allowing the employer's appeal, held that the claimants had to prove the nature of the group disadvantage for the purposes of surmounting the hurdle in s 19(2)(b) of the Equality Act 2010 and that each claimant had to also prove that he had suffered the same disadvantage for the purposes of surmounting the hurdle in s 19(2)(c) of the Act. 

Immigration – Leave to remain. The claimant sought judicial review of the competent authority's decisions finding no reasonable grounds for concluding that he had been trafficked from Vietnam to Russia or onward from Russia to the United Kingdom. The Administrative Court, in allowing the application, held that the reasonable grounds decisions had been flawed by failures to address the right question, to apply the right burden of proof, and failures to apply the sympathetic and inquisitorial approach to credibility advocated in the defendant Secretary of State's guidance. That also constituted a breach of the duty of inquiry, under art 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Practice – Order. The defendants applied to set aside a judgment made against them for failure to comply with an unless order in the disclosure of documents. The Commercial Court held that the judgment would be set aside, where it was not persuaded that it should reject as untruthful the defendants' accounts of their problems in listing certain documents that needed to be disclosed. 

European Union – Freedom of movement. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling deciding, among other things, that, Chapter 1, paras 2 and 13 of Annex X to the Act of Accession 2003, had to be interpreted as meaning that Austria was entitled to restrict the hiring-out of workers on its territory, in accordance with Chapter 1, para 2 of that annex, even though that provision did not concern a sensitive sector, within the meaning of Chapter 1, para 13, thereof.