Featured
There is no question about it… AI is changing the world. And lawyers are no exception to this.
So what opportunities are there for different law firms? And how is generative AI going to change the industry?
People have adopted widely different attitudes and approaches to changes to working practices during the Covid 19 pandemic. Understandably this has led to numerous disputes between employers and employees; a fair number of those dismissals have been challenged in tribunal.
Not it seems a fear of catching Covid! Perhaps that’s not really too much of a surprise? The Equality Act 2010 allows for the protection of philosophical beliefs, and you may remember that this protection does extend to ethical veganism . The issue of whether protection extended to concerns about catching Covid and passing it on to vulnerable relatives was recently tested in the Employment Appeal Tribunal…
SQE results are here…. and they make for rather grim reading. The overall pass percentage was 53%, not so far off the average for the LPC but the pass rate for white candidates was 65% and for BAME candidates 44%. How can that possibly have happened?
Apparently when it is exaggeration! This was the decision in Elgamal v Westminster City Council [2021] and it might be of interest to those studying tort.
Here at Law Answered we go through law updates every week to make sure that we’re keeping up with the law and can update our guides effectively. Some weeks we find there’s nothing much to note but we’ve just come across three really interesting tort cases and thought we’d share them with you in advance of popping them into our guides for the summer release dates.
A measure of damages in respect of a tortious claim is for “pain, suffering and loss of amenity”. Does that apply if a person is involved in an accident which sadly proves fatal, in all likelihood instantaneously fatal?
Well this is a thorny question and one which attracted our attention on a “back to work” trawl of recent cases ready for our next round of updates. We thought we’d share it with you together with our very best wishes for a great 2022.
If you’ve studied Tort law, you’ll be aware that claims in negligence must be brought within 6 years. But what if something else happens, years after that claim has been settled, that means the situation has significantly worsened for the claimant?
It’s trite law that an entitlement to compensation flows where someone’s negligence has caused you damage. But sometimes things aren’t quite as simple as they seem.
There have been several decisions regarding limitation periods over this last week and they are worth a quick mention of those of you in the process of studying the LPC. They could be particularly relevant if you are doing a Masters and addressing this issue in your long essay.
Here at Law Answered we have a weekly routine of looking through legal trackers to find new cases and any changes. We log anything interesting to update our guides annually and sometimes we blog about changes too. This is painstaking work, demanding close attention to detail and (let’s face it) sometimes some resilience, not all the updates are that interesting!
It’s been well documented that there’s been an explosion in pet ownership and there’ve been lots of reports of dogs being stolen and then re-sold – a real tragedy for owners and the animals concerned. Our attention was drawn this week to a claim about a “defective dog” under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 “CRA”.
If you’re currently studying land law or hoping to build a career based on it you might be interested in the recent decision in Bank of New York Mellon v Cine-UK. The case is also relevant to discussions on the law of frustration and would be a good one to cite if you’re doing an essay on that.
Well if property law is “your thing” there’s recently been a helpful decision on this. If you’re doing an essay question which demands that you consider tenants’ liability under their leases to pay for repairs then it’s going to be well worth knowing about City of London v Leaseholders of Great Arthur House.
There really isn’t much point in litigating to recover debts if you’re not going to be able to get any money at the end of the day. It’s always been important to consider the financial position of the proposed defendant before leaping off to take legal action, but there is now something new to consider – at least in the short term – if you succeed in getting judgment.
All of us could be forgiven for being confused about how Brexit has affected human rights protection in the UK. Only last month one prominent Brexiter was criticising the EU Human Rights Act. Hold on… that’s not sounding right is it? If legislation is called an Act it has been passed by the UK government. Why would the UK government preface the name of the Act with EU? The proper name of the Act enshrining human rights protection is, of course, the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”).
What happened when a court was asked to rule on whether the vaccine should be given to an elderly woman suffering from dementia and schizophrenia and lacking capacity to consent to treatment?
This isn’t usually a very difficult question, is it? If something is proximate, it is nearby. But what about the concept in relation to tort and people who claim damages for injury as a result of what they witnessed, rather than what happened to them?
Most of us find negligence cases interesting – for one thing they’re always relatively accessible and it’s easy (and interesting) to ponder the moral rights and wrongs of what went. We like to see if we agree with the legal outcome.
If you’re an aspiring lawyer you cannot afford to ignore last month’s decision of the Supreme Court in Financial Conduct Authority v Arch Insurance. If you’re looking to be a commercial lawyer don’t try to go into an interview without a clear understanding of this case – for everyone else the law on causation has shifted. That’s all round a pretty big deal!
Ok, so Covid has affected every single aspect of our lives and has and is causing huge problems with the court systems. There have been outbreaks of Covid emanating from the courts, there are shortages of judiciary to hear cases and a massive backlog of cases. On top of all of that Covid is now apparently rampant in our prisons. Covid’s impact on limitation periods is just one more thing!
If you’ve studies Civil Lit you’ll have learnt about search orders – draconian in nature these empower solicitors to look for particular categories of documents which are described in advance to the court. These orders are made infrequently and only where the court is persuaded that there is good reason that if the order is not made then relevant documents might go missing.
The important case of Patel v Mirza [2016] was recently reconsidered in Henderson v Dorset Healthcare Trust [2020] and a knowledge of the recent case could well be worth a few more marks in any essay you might be writing.
Are you bent on civil disobedience? What if that means you breach a court order?
We’re all lawyers here at Law Answered and sometimes, when we’re looking at law updates we come across cases which just interest us. Secretary of State for Transport and another v Cuciuran [2020] is just one of those and we thought we’d share it with you!
Well no. It doesn’t! This might come as quite a surprise to some. Since the UK had been a member of the EU for nearly 50 years our laws were comprehensively entwined with EU laws and in order to prevent a serious lacuna in the legal system the government enacted the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (“EU(W)A”). The EU(W)A created the concept of retained law effectively writing EU law wholesale into UK law.
Everyone who has studied tort is familiar with the difficulties faced by secondary victims in seeking to make a recovery for psychiatric harm or shock suffered in relation to being a party to shocking events without themselves suffering any physical harm. There are a plethora of reported cases for you to draw on in any essays on the subject.
Lots of us remember having to study Charles Dickens books at school and learning that his father had been sent to the debtor’s prison. We probably all vaguely know that you can’t go to prison now for not paying a debt…. or can you?
When a tort is committed by someone without significant wealth or any insurance cover, it is natural that a victim should cast around to see whether any legal personality with money might also be liable for the tortious act. A recovery of damages might depend on finding such a person.
Since our judicial system relies on the decision making of people, the possibility of bias can never be entirely excluded. Judges have a duty to determine cases fairly and we rely on them to be able to do that and to know when they need to stand aside.