Latest Cases

Costs – Assessment. The respondent solicitor rendered various bills to the appellant company. The bills were sent for detailed assessment and a master made such an assessment pursuant to s 70 of the Solicitors Act 1974. The master considered that the schedule supplied consequent on a court order did not comply with that order and stayed the assessment. The appellant appealed. The Queen's Bench Division held that the master had been entitled to have come to the decision to which he had. 

Landlord and tenant – Lease. The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) made a number of rulings regarding the entitlement of the landlord of a block of apartments to recover the cost of gas supplied to heat a number of the apartments under the terms of a lease. In dismissing the landlord's appeal, the tribunal held that the true construction of the lease would not lead a reasonable person to conclude that it embraced the provision of heat to individual apartments through the common heating system. 

Trade mark – Opposition to registration. The Chancery Division considered challenges to a United Kingdom trade mark held by the defendant companies with regard to the sale of clothing. The court held that, while it would be appropriate to adjust the UK trade mark to exclude sporting goods of the sort sold by the claimant company, the mark remained valid and hence the claim would fail. 

Will – testator. The Chancery Division considered the validity of two wills made by an elderly woman who had suffered from dementia and blindness. It held it would pronounce in favour of her first will, made in 2004, but would pronounce against her second will, which had been made in 2007, on the grounds that she had lacked the capacity to understand the changes that it contained. 

Criminal evidence – Practice. The Administrative Court dismissed the appellant's appeal by way of case stated. In the instant case, the justices had been correct in law in rejecting the appellant's application to stay the proceedings as an abuse of process of the court. 

University – Examination. The claimant medical student failed his final year exams on the first and second attempt. His appeal was unsuccessful and he applied for judicial review of the way in which his grade had been calculated and the conduct of the appeal process. The Administrative Court dismissed his claim as the university had acted in compliance with the relevant handbook and the appeal had been conducted reasonably and rationally. 

Town and country planning – Planning permission. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant residents' action group's application for judicial review of the defendant local authority's decision to grant two applications for planning permission for the redevelopment of two neighbouring sites. Applying established principles to the facts of the instant case, it was clear that the authority's screening opinion for the site A proposal had been lawful. Further, the approach taken by the authority to the site A proposal as 'enabling development' had been appropriate and lawful. 

Sentence – Confiscation order. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, on allowing a defendant's appeal, ordered the re-hearing of a confiscation hearing on the issue of benefit in circumstances where there had been a misunderstanding on the judge's part of the defendant's position on that issue. The defendant had not conceded the prosecutor's benefit figure nor, alternatively, had the judge, in the circumstances, been entitled so to find. In consequence, the defendant neither gave evidence, nor addressed argument to the judge, upon the benefit issue. For that reason, the confiscation hearing had been tainted with unfairness and the judge's ruling on that matter would be quashed. 

Barrister – Regulation. The Administrative Court allowed the claimant barrister's application for judicial review of the defendant legal ombudsman's decision to uphold the interested party's complaint of poor service received from the claimant. The ombudsman's decision had been irrational and had to be quashed. 

Personal Injury. The Claimant suffered a permanent low back injury as the result of a work related accident. He was awarded damages of £17,000 for pain suffering and loss of amenity.