Law Weblog

A deadline is a deadline

Saturday 10 November 2007 at 9:36 am | In News | Post Comment

Mr Millerâ€™s employment claim was rejected because it was received nine seconds too late.

Mr Miller wanted to bring a case of unfair dismissal against his employer, so he employed a law student, paying him Â£120 per hour.

Claims can be lodged online and the student did just that, pressing â€œsendâ€ one second before midnight of the 3 month deadline. It did not reach the tribunal’s servers until eight seconds after midnight. The Employment Tribunal ruled the claim invalid. The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the ruling.

The luckless law student could be facing charges for providing unauthorised services. He not qualified at the time of submitting the claim.

Whole case here UKEAT/0486/07

Legal Services Board, the Office for Legal Complaints (the new ombudsman) and “Tesco law” still some way away.

Friday 9 November 2007 at 10:09 am | In News | Post Comment

The Legal Services Act has received Royal Assent and heralds a revolution in how legal services will be delivered to the public.

Solicitors Regulation Authority

The chairman of the Legal Services Board and board members are unlikely to be appointed until next year. The Office for Legal Complaints is unlikely to be empowered to handle complaints until autumn 2010.

Alternative business structures, which allow lawyers to form partnerships with outside professionals or invite outside investment, is unlikely to be until at least 2012.

So, the Legal Services Board (LSB) which will regulate the professions, the independent ombudsman, to deal with consumer complaints and new forms of legal practice (“Tesco law”) are all still a long way off.

Nude, naked and undressed

Thursday 8 November 2007 at 9:48 pm | In News | 1 Comment

The â€œNaked Ramblerâ€ has lost his appeal for contempt of court for refusing to dress for court appearances.
The Lord Justices of Appeal in Edinburgh said, “The appearance of anyone in court naked, whatever crimes that may constitute, is unquestionably a contempt.”
Stephen Gough aged 47, claimed he had rights guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The decision was given while he remained in the cells, it is not recorded if he was dressed or not.
He has twice walked naked from Land’s End to John O’Groats, not without the occasional arrest.

Once a judge, always a judge

Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 7:46 pm | In News | Post Comment

The convention that prevents judges from returning to private practice will remain in place.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, said lifting the prohibition would not increase diversity in the judiciary and that the ban would therefore remain in place.
Whitehall launched a consultation paper on the subject last year, the result became known on 5 November, some 8 months later.
Only a handful of former judges have moved into consultancy roles in private practice. In 2005 Patents Court judge Sir Hugh Laddie controversially quit the bench to take up a consultancy role with a specialist intellectual property firm.

Juries – doubts as to whether some CPS lawyers and police officers should sit

Sunday 21 October 2007 at 8:16 pm | In News | Post Comment

R v Abdroikof [2007] HL

Where either a police officer or a solicitor employed by the Crown Prosecution Service had sat on a jury the question to be asked was whether, on the particular facts of each of the cases, a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that the jury that included a serving police officer or a lawyer who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service was biased, having regard to the fact that Parliament had declared that in England and Wales, by enacting the Criminal Justice Act 2003, that such persons were eligible to sit on juries, envisaging that any objection to their sitting would be the subject of judicial decision. Nevertheless, it had to be doubted whether Parliament had contemplated that employed Crown prosecutors would sit as jurors in prosecutions brought by their own authority.

Manslaughter – never from the supply of drugs

Sunday 21 October 2007 at 8:14 pm | In News | Post Comment

R v Kennedy [2007] HL
Where the deceased was a fully informed and responsible adult, it was never appropriate to find guilty of manslaughter a person who had been involved in the supply to the deceased of a Class A controlled drug, which had then been freely and voluntarily self-administered by the deceased, and the administration of the drug had caused his death.

The start of the end of the House of Lords (Appellate Committee)

Wednesday 10 October 2007 at 9:11 pm | In News | Post Comment

New appointments of judges to the House of Lords will be subject to same selection procedure as other judges.

The new appointments process for Justices of the new UK Supreme Court will take immediate effect, when a vacancy arises, on a voluntary basis. All new judges appointed to the Supreme Court after its creation will not be members of the House of Lords; they will become Justices of the Supreme Court.

Section 8 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 makes provision for a new appointments process.

A judge newly appointed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords will spend the majority of their career in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will be operational in October 2009.

The new arrangements aim to increase public confidence in the appointments process by creating greater transparency of appointments and improving competition for these positions.

A selection commission will be composed of the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court and members of the appointment bodies for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

If you are guilty you are guilty, if you are innocent you are guilty under proposed law

Sunday 7 October 2007 at 3:34 pm | In News | Post Comment

Ministers are insisting a new law is needed to stop criminals “getting away” with their crimes.

Senior appeal court judges, the council of circuit judges, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) the Law Society, the Criminal Bar Association and the campaigning groups Justice and Liberty are all vehemently opposed to the new law. The opposition of these groups has been kept secret by the government.

The measures are part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration bill due for a second reading next week. If it becomes law, judges would have to uphold a conviction if they thought the defendant was guilty despite flaws in the trial or pre-trial process.

See article in The Guardian

Donâ€™t fall out with your relativesâ€¦.

Sunday 30 September 2007 at 9:17 am | In News | Post Comment

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 comes into force on 1 October. It allows the ending of life of a patient by medical intervention. Bluntly, whilst euthanasia remains illegal it will be possible to kill patients by starving them to death or ceasing medical treatment.

â€œLiving willsâ€, in which patients can set down what medical treatment they wish to be given, or not given, will be enforceable in law.

Many law students know of the House of Lords decision in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993]. Anthony Bland was in persistent vegetative state from the age of 17 to 21, the hospital supported by his parents asked the court for permission to discontinue food and water, the House of Lords granted the request, and after a few weeks, he was dead.

The new Office of the Public Guardian will investigate complaints about the law. A Court of Protection has been set up to settle disputes.

If a doctor were to treat a patient against their wishes it will be an unlawful act and he/she could be prosecuted or face a claim for compensation.

The Islamic Medical Association has followed the Catholic Church’s earlier response in saying that its doctors should break the law, rather than comply with so-called ‘living wills’.

After the Bland case, Catherine Roberts was in a coma; doctors in Bournemouth were going to pull the plug of her breathing apparatus. Twenty-six-year-old Catherine blinked at her mother and poked her tongue out just one day away from her planned death.