Latest Cases

Medical practitioner – Disciplinary panel. The appellant Professional Standards Authority referred to the Administrative Court the decision of the Conduct and Competence Committee (the CCC) of the first respondent Health and Care Professions Council (the Council), imposing a caution order for a period of five years for bullying and sexual harassment. The court, in dismissing the appeal, upheld the CCC's findings on three allegations and found it would be a gross breach of fair hearing procedure to allow their amendment after the evidence had been heard. Further, the sanction imposed by the CCC had not been unduly lenient, and its reasons had been intelligible and sufficient. 

European Union – Regulations. The General Court of the European Union allowed the action brought by Mr Chafiq Ayadi for annulment of Commission Regulation (EC) No 954/2009, amending Council Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 (imposing certain specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities associated with Usama bin Laden, the Al-Qaida network and the Taliban), in so far as that act concerned Mr Ayadi. 

Privilege – Legal professional privilege. The present proceedings concerned whether certain passages in the claimants' re-amended particulars of claim should be struck out on the basis that they referred to matters protected by legal professional privilege. The Chancery Division, in dismissing the application, held, inter alia, that privilege in the relevant documents had been waived by the fourth defendant and, failing that, the third defendant. 

Immigration – Asylum. The defendant Secretary of State's letters, refusing the claimant's application to revoke his deportation order, stated that no right of appeal arose because the claimant's submissions had not amounted to a fresh claim. The claimant sought judicial review. The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), in dismissing the application, held that submissions purporting to be a human rights claim did not, without more, trigger a right of appeal and para 353 of the Immigration Rules provided the mechanism to determine whether they amounted to a claim. As the claimant's submissions had been determined not to have been a claim, there was no decision and, thus, no right of appeal. 

Criminal law – Trial. The defendant was convicted of rape and assault by penetration of his adult daughter, who had been placed for adoption shortly after birth, but had reunited with the defendant in her thirties. The defendant had contended at trial that sexual intercourse had been consensual. He appealed against conviction on the ground that, among other things, the judge's summing up had been deficient in that it had not gone into the detail of text messages sent the complainant to the defendant which contradicted her evidence that sex had been non-consensual. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, in allowing the appeal, held that, the conviction could not be held to be safe in the face of the deficiencies revealed by the summing up. 

Insolvency – Administration order. The applicant, in his capacity as a creditor of the company for the purposes of para 12(1)(c) of Sch B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986, sought an administration order to take effect retrospectively from November 2010. The court was being asked to make a retrospective order which would cure the fact of the void appointments of the purported present liquidators, by casting back over four years and validating the actions of those individuals, not as liquidators, but as administrators, in the intervening period, with a view to the company being moved by those freshly appointed administrators into creditors' voluntary liquidation. The Chancery Division held that, in the circumstances, the only appropriate outcome for the present administration application was to make an order for the compulsory winding-up of the company. 

Adoption – Dispensing with consent of parent or guardian. The Family Court made an adoption order regarding E, a two-year old boy, where the mother was a recovering heroin addict with alcohol issues and had been in a relationship with E's father, who had behaved violently to her. 

Sentence – Imprisonment. The claimant was serving a sentence of life imprisonment, with a minimum term of six years, for rape. He sought judicial review of the defendant Parole Board's decision not to recommend his transfer to open conditions. The Administrative Court, in allowing the application, held that the Parole Board had not simply placed a high weight on the fact that the claimant denied sexual intercourse with the complainant, which it would have been entitled to have done, but had used the factor of denial as the sole factor to be put in the balance when assessing the continuing degree of risk. 

Family proceedings – Orders in family proceedings. The Family Court made a declaration of parentage in favour of X, in circumstances where a fertility clinic was found to have mislaid the requisite consent form relating to parenthood prior to treatment. X was the partner of Y who had conceived the child, Z, using donor sperm following treatment at the clinic. 

Judgment – Enforcement. In earlier proceedings, the court found against a number of the defendants (together, the Ruperti defendants). The Ruperti defendants had difficulties in paying sums owed to a group of claimants. A settlement agreement was established. The Commercial Court considered various issues arising from the settlement agreement and made rulings on its application.