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!

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!

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.

A common political tactic is to use a bigger event that is currently distracting the public as cover to release potentially harmful or embarrassing information. Coronavirus is the distraction that the current government is using to mount an inquiry into judicial review. However, such a review should come as no surprise. It is clear that there has been mounting tension between the judiciary and the executive in recent years with successive governments being frustrated by what they see as excessive and expanding judicial interference in politics – the peak of this being the two Miller cases.

Well, surely you can’t. Actually, since Whittington Hospital v xx you can. The Supreme Court has allowed it!

It’s well worth remembering that the rule on self-dealing by trustees is a lot stricter than the rule on fair dealing. This has been underlined by a recent case which might be quite useful if you’re having to write an essay about fiduciary duties. (If you’ve got our LLB Equity guide you might add a link to this case to page 86. It’s page 374 in our GDL guide).

Normally courts interpret and uphold statutory law as it stands and develop case law according to the doctrine of precedent. These, however, are not exactly normal times, we’ve all been locked up and working from home for months and now the courts have decided to take action on the basis of a statute which has yet to be introduced.

Now we all know that hospital beds have been regarded as being at something of a premium recently as the NHS has gathered together all its resources to support the Covid 19 public health emergency but we did raise an eyebrow at the idea of an injunction being issued to recover a hospital bad!

We’re all pretty familiar with the old adage “caveat emptor” or buyer beware and those studying the LPC will have notes that stress that even after all the record searches have been completed a visual inspection of the property remains important and that such inspection might raise new enquiries which need to be dealt with.