Latest Cases

Company – Minority shareholder. The Chancery Division considered the issue of whether the claimant would be allowed to continue an action against the first defendant as a derivative claim on behalf of and for the benefit of the second and third defendant companies. The court held that the claimant had failed to satisfy it that the proposed derivative action fell within the exception to the rule in Foss v Harbottle (1843)67 ER 189, and so the application would be dismissed. 

Prison – Release on licence. The claimant was convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act 2006. On release from prison, a number of conditions were attached to his licence. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant's application for judicial review of two of the conditions, holding that the conditions were not in themselves ultra vires and that they were manifestly for the purposes of protecting the public and preventing re-offending and were accordingly justified. 

Damages – Personal injury. The claimant dislocated her kneecap whilst travelling on a bus. Eventually an ambulance came. However there had been a delay and the defendant admitted liability in respect of 17 minutes of the delay. The claimant brought an action for personal injury for PTSD in respect of the incident. The Queen's Bench Division held that there had been a causative link between the defendant's admitted negligence and the claimant's PTSD and the dissociative seizures which occurred as a result. The appropriate award for general damages was £60,000. 

Order – Application to set aside order. The Technology and Construction Court set aside an order granting a claimant an extension of time to serve its claim regarding a building dispute and dismissed the claim where it had not been validly served within the time of validity of the claim form. 

Immigration – Asylum. Court of Session: Dismissing a judicial review petition by a failed Iranian asylum seeker, challenging a decision not to treat his further submissions as a fresh claim, the court rejected submissions that the decision maker simply formed his own view and assumed that another immigration judge would agree with him, that it was incumbent on him to make enquiries about the authenticity of an Iranian court summons, and that he erred in relying on an immigration judge's findings on credibility. 

Social Security – Benefit. The applicants were single mothers, or the children of single mothers, who had sought judicial review of the government's introduction of a cap on welfare benefits as being particularly disadvantageous to women in general and to women escaping domestic violence in particular. The Divisional Court had dismissed their application. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, dismissed their appeal on the grounds that the Benefit Cap (Housing Benefit) Regulations 2012, SI 2012/2994, had not infringed any of, or a combination of, arts 8, 14 and art 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. Further, there had been no infringement of art 3(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Immigration – Asylum seeker. The defendant Secretary of State had arranged for the claimant asylum seeker to be removed to Cyprus, as he had initially claimed asylum in that member state before making his claim in the United Kingdom. The claimant sought judicial review of that decision. Dismissing the claim, the Administrative Court held that in the absence of a human rights claim of substance, the claimant's legitimate public law interests had been protected by the assumption that it would not matter to the outcome where in the Community an asylum application was heard. The discretion in art 3(2) of Council Regulation (EC) 343/2003 had been a matter solely between the UK and Cyprus, not justiciable in the instant court at the insistence of the claimant. 

Immigration – Deportation – Right to respect for private and family life – Refusal of leave to appeal. Court of Session: Granting a petition seeking judicial review of a decision of the Upper Tribunal (UT) refusing permission to appeal against a decision of the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) dismissing an appeal against a decision that the petitioner did not fall within an exception to the requirement to make a deportation order in respect of a 'foreign criminal', the court concluded that the FTT denied the petitioner the right to a fair hearing and the UT erred in holding that the grounds he advanced disclosed no arguable error in the FTT's decision. 

Libel and slander – Publication. Following her conviction for harassment the claimant brought a libel action against the defendant publisher for words published in an online article which was later taken down. When the defendant applied to strike out the action, the Queen's Bench Division allowed the claim on the basis that the words were not capable of amounting to defamation and, in any event, there was nothing of value to the claimant which she could hope to achieve by a reformulation of her claim in the action to embrace a claim based on the parts of the article which purported to report the allegations of harassment. 

Easement – Right of way. The claimant local authority sought an injunction, requiring the defendant to re-open a passageway the subject of its right of way. The judge granted the injunction, having found that two distinct groups benefited from the right of way and that one group had abandoned its right to the passageway. The parties appealed. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division held that the judge had erred in concluding that there had been a partial abandonment of a right of way by reference to different classes of potential users. Further, mere non-use had been incapable of supporting a conclusion that the right of way had been abandoned for all time.