Latest Cases

Adjudication – Jurisdiction. By a deed of appointment, the claimant company agreed to provide mechanical and electrical engineering design services for the design and construction of a new data centre for Barclays plc. A dispute arose. The defendant, an affiliate of Barclays plc, as a third party, referred to adjudication a dispute regarding defects in the chilled water system. The claimant sought declarations that the defendant was not entitled to commence adjudication proceedings and that the adjudicator lacked jurisdiction. The Technology and Construction Court held that the defendant third party had not been given a right to enforce the terms of the deed of appointment by adjudication. Accordingly, it was not entitled to commence adjudication proceedings against the claimant and that the adjudicator did not have jurisdiction to determine the claim. 

Police – Discipline. The claimant sought judicial review of the defendant's decision to maintain his suspension pending disciplinary proceedings and refusal to consent to his resignation, contrary to earlier assurances. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the claim, held, inter alia, that the public interest in ensuring that the claimant remained subject to police disciplinary jurisdiction in such a serious case had justified the defendant departing from the representation previously made that he would not be prevented from resigning. 

European Union – Trade marks. The applicant sought the annulment of the decision of the Second Board of Appeal of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (the Board), refusing its trade mark application for a figurative sign including the words 'Sotto il Sole'. The General Court of the European Union, in allowing the action, held that the Board had acted in breach of its duty to provide a statement of reasons, as it had not analysed the evidence to respond to the applicant's arguments concerning the weak distinctive character of the words 'sol', 'sole', 'soleil' or 'sun', or images of the sun in the wine sector. 

Medical practitioner – Disciplinary panel. The appellant doctor admitted falsifying clinical assessment entries on his e-portfolio. Before the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel (FTPP), the appellant, it was said, on the advice of the barrister representing him below, initially denied that his conduct had been dishonest. The appellant later admitted that his conduct had been dishonest. The FTPP erased the appellant from the medical register and he appealed. The Administrative Court, in dismissing the appeal, held that the FTPP had been entitled to reach that decision on the evidence before it, even if another FTPP might, possibly, have reached a different view. 

European Union – Freedom to provide services. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that, in a situation such as that at issue in the main proceedings, in which a tenderer intended to carry out a public contract by having recourse exclusively to workers employed by a sub-contractor established in a member state, other than that to which the contracting authority belonged, art 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union precluded the application of legislation of the member state to which that contracting authority belonged which required that sub-contractor to pay those workers a minimum wage fixed by that legislation. 

Company – Member. The petitioner, who was excluded from the first defendant company, which she had owned as a quasi-partnership with the second defendant, presented a petition to the court, under s 994 of the Companies Act 2006, alleging that the second defendant had conducted the affairs of the company in an unfairly prejudicial manner. The Companies Court, in granting the petition, held that the second defendant had acted in a manner which had been unfairly prejudicial to the interests of the petitioner in respect of the company. Accordingly, an order was made, requiring the second defendant to purchase the petitioner's shares in the company at the price reflecting the fair and proper value of the petitioner's shares in the company as at the date she had been excluded. 

Employment – Contract of employment. The employment tribunal had found that the employees had been employed under contracts of apprenticeship. The employer, the Revenue and Customs Commissioners, appealed. The issue was whether workers at a livery stable were employed under contracts of work on apprenticeships for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999, SI 1999/584. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, in allowing the appeal, held that the tribunal had erred in finding that the employees had been employed under contracts of apprenticeship. 

Will – Benefit. The Chancery Division held that the forfeiture rule applied in circumstances where the claimant had been convicted of the manslaughter of his partner and child, and where the claimant was the residuary beneficiary under his partner's will. Further, it held that the justice of the case did not require the effect of the rule to be modified. The court considered the claimant's culpability in the light of the mental disorder from which he was suffering on the day of the killings. 

European Union – Reference to European Court. The Court of Justice of the European Union made a preliminary ruling, in which it held that, on a proper construction of art 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, for the purposes of determining whether or not the guarantees provided by a public undertaking were imputable to the public authority controlling that undertaking, the following were relevant, together with the body of evidence arising from the circumstances of the case in the main proceedings and from the context in which they had taken place: on the one hand, that the sole director of the company providing those guarantees acted improperly, deliberately kept the provision of those guarantees secret and disregarded the undertaking's statues and, on the other, that that public authority would have opposed the provision of the guarantees, had it been informed of it. 

European Union – Regulations. The applicant Central Bank of Iran sought the annulment of Council Regulation (EU) 267/2012, listing it as a body subject to restrictive measures introduced in order to apply pressure to Iran to end its proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities and the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. The General Court of the European Union, in allowing the application, held that the Council's statement of reasons for that act was insufficient, as it did not enable either the applicant or the Court to understand the circumstances which had led the Council to consider that the relevant criterion had been satisfied in the case of the applicant and, accordingly, to adopt the contested act.