Latest Cases

Employment – Disability. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (the EAT) upheld the rejection by the employment tribunal of the employee's claims for, amongst other things, direct disability discrimination and failure to make reasonable adjustments. However, the EAT decided that in concluding that an adjustment to the scoring of criteria for selection for redundancy would not have avoided dismissal in any event, the reasonable adjustments duty should not have been limited to avoiding dismissal, but should have extended to avoiding detriment flowing from disadvantage, and the hurt feelings that would have resulted. Accordingly, the case would be remitted for reconsideration of that limited point only. 

Employment – Discrimination. Following the judgment of the Supreme Court in Seldon v Clarkson Wright & Jakes (see [2012] 3 All ER 1301), the case returned to the employment tribunal (the tribunal) for a decision as to whether the selection by the employer solicitors' firm of the compulsory age of 65 for retirement had been proportionate to achieve its aims of retention and workforce planning. The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the tribunal's decision that the choice of age 65 had been proportionate. 

Landlord and tenant – Recovery for possession. The appellant had rented a house from her parents under an assured shorthold tenancy. The parents had fallen into arrears on the mortgage and the lender appointed receivers who then issued a possession notice. They later issued possession proceedings in the name of the parents as landlords. The possession order was granted and the appellant appealed. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed the appeal and held that there was no clear and consistent line of Strasbourg jurisprudence that the proportionality test at art 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights did not apply to disputes between tenants and private landlords where the tenant relied on art 8. 

Practice – Pre-trial or post-judgment relief. The claimant was seriously injured through the defendant's admitted negligence in a road traffic accident in April 2012. A master ordered an interim payment of £500,000 to be paid to the claimant. The defendant appealed by way of challenge to the issues of contributory negligence and accommodation costs. The Queen's Bench Division dismissed the appeal as the decision of the master could not be faulted. 

Damages – Personal injury. SK died from mesothelioma following exposure to asbestos whilst working in a prison. The claimant was her widower and the administrator of her estate who brought an action agains the defendant, Ministry of Defence. Liability was admitted and there was a trial to decide certain heads of damages inclusing general damages for pain suffering and loss of amenity. The Queen's Bench Division arrived at a figure of £80,000 for general damages, with a total award of £642,972.51. 

Value added tax – Exemptions. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) (the tribunal) allowed the appeal by the Revenue and Customs Commissioners against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) which had held that the taxpayer's business involved the making of supplies of a single service, the predominant element of which had been the provision of a licence to occupy a defined parcel of land, with the result that the supplies were exempt from VAT under Item 1 of Group 1 of Sch 9 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994. The tribunal decided that the correct classification of the single composite supply was the provision of storage facilities, which was subject to VAT. 

Bahamas – Injunction. The action concerned the construction of a cruise ship terminal and dock off the island of North Bimini and the creation of a 4.5 acre island offshore, using material dredged from the sea. The claimant company, formed by residents of the island, sought to prevent the development, which it believed would cause severe environmental damage. The Court of Appeal dismissed, by a majority, the claimant's appeal from a judge's decision to set aside an injunction to restrain the dredging of the sea, which had been granted to the claimant by the Board of the Privy Council. The Privy Council, in dismissing the claimant's appeal, held that, on the facts, there had been no error of law or perversity of fact in the judge's decision and the Court of Appeal had been right to uphold it. 

Minor – Custody. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed the father's appeal in respect of his application for the return of his children from Bangladesh. It held that, in considering a child's habitual residence, the court had to conduct a factual enquiry tailored to the circumstances of the individual case. Further, although there was jurisdiction to hear the application under art 10 of Council Regulation (EC) 2201/2003 (concerning jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters and the matters of parental responsibility) (Brussels II), the existence of jurisdiction and the exercise of it were two separate matters. On the facts of the instant case, the exercise of jurisdiction would result in the dismissal of the proceedings in any event. 

European Union – Directives. The proceedings concerned a tendering process carried out by the respondent Common Services Agency in 2010 in respect of the provision of medical services to health authorities in Scotland. The appellant submitted that, among other things, the court below had erred in treating the reasonably well-informed and diligent tenderer (the RWIND tenderer) as a hypothetical construct, and in applying the RWIND tenderer standard according to the court's assessment of what a hypothetical RWIND tenderer would have done or thought. The Supreme Court, in dismissing the claim, held that the question could not be determined by evidence, as it depended on the application of a legal test rather than being a purely empirical enquiry. 

Value added tax – Input tax. The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) had found that the taxpayer was not entitled to deduct input tax from the fees that it had paid under a tri-partite agreement because it had not been the recipient of the supply of services for the purposes of s 24 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, upheld that decision as the tribunal had asked itself the correct question and had reached sustainable conclusions on its assessment of the relevant agreement.