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There has recently been a further case on long-term sickness and a worker’s right to accrue untaken annual holiday leave ( Fraser v Southwest London St George’s Mental Health Trust ). Mrs Fraser was on long-term sick leave after she injured her...
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Although pre-nuptial agreements are persuasive rather than binding in the British courts, a recent ruling of the High Court on a French ‘pre-nup’ illustrates clearly the current approach of the courts. It involved a very wealthy French couple...
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A rider who was injured after being thrown from her horse has won compensation of £37,000. The accident happened in 2007 when Ceri Tonkinson was riding in Cosmeston Country Park, near Penarth in Wales. The horse she was riding had only recently been...
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Asbestos was widely used as a building material between the 1940s and 1970s due to its strength, flexibility and insulating properties. However, according to the Health & Safety Executive, asbestos exposure is now the greatest cause of work-related...
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People often feel that in making provision for future events they are somehow tempting fate. No-one wants to dwell on what lies ahead and particularly the possibility of illness and eventual death. Some of us will nonetheless make a will. ...
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From October this year new laws will require employers to automatically enrol eligible "jobholders" in a pension scheme. Eligible jobholders are aged between 16 and 74, normally work in the UK under a contract of employment and are paid...
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The fact that you will need a funeral is one of life’s inevitabilities. However, the cost of even the most basic funeral is out of reach for many people. Funeral costs have risen, on average, by 7.32% per annum over the last five years...
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With the political spotlight on the so called “compensation culture” and numerous news stories appearing in the press about “crash for cash” road accident claims, the courts are showing a greater appetite for giving prison sentences...
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When a property is owned by two people as joint tenants (where the title to the property is owned by each of them, so that if one dies, the other inherits the property by survivorship), each of them is considered to be the legal owner of the property. A man...
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Creating a commercial database and keeping it up to date is an expensive business and owners of such databases often take precautions to make sure they are not used without permission. One method of doing this is for the owners of databases to plant...
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Many clients tell us that they are in unhappy marriages but they are waiting for the economy to recover before sorting out their financial affairs. However, David Cameron’s New Year’s message confirmed what we already know, money is tight and...
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A retired plumber who was diagnosed with mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos at work has won £115,000 in damages. The man had worked almost exclusively for the same building firm between 1950 and the early 1970s. He was exposed to asbestos...
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A North Somerset man has received a six-figure sum in compensation after a mistake during an operation on his heart led to him having to have a pacemaker fitted. Steve Edwards, 51, an NHS manager from Weston-super-Mare, was undergoing treatment for an...
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When a supplier to a marquee company was not paid for goods it had supplied, the directors told the supplier that the company was waiting for an insurance claim to be settled, after which payments would be made as usual. In reality, there was no insurance...
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The wave of litigation which has followed the turmoil in the financial markets as a result of the credit crunch has led to many decisions that have resulted in those suing financial institutions being left to lick their wounds (and also facing sizeable legal...
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A court ruling that a spouse’s lottery winnings were not ‘matrimonial property’ so were not subject to the usual rule of equal division between the spouses when the marriage broke up received much publicity recently. The normal rule on...
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The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has now published its response to the recent consultation on proposals to criminalise squatting. The consultation paper, entitled ‘Options for dealing with squatting’ , received over 2,000 responses. As a first...
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A man who was almost blinded after an accident at work has won an undisclosed amount in damages. Trevor Watson, 42, was working as a drainage engineer. He was instructed to take his truck to a hydraulic specialist because of a blockage in its jetting...
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Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (now superseded by the Equality Act 2010 ), when deciding whether or not an employer took sufficient steps to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments to remove a disadvantage faced by a disabled...
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HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have announced that the Mortgage Verification Scheme (MVS), which was developed in co-operation with the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Building Societies Association and run as a pilot scheme in March 2010, is now fully...
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When a Jersey multi-millionaire gave most of his assets away to one of his daughters in the months prior to his death, leaving an estate of less than £100,000 to be shared by all three of his children, it was perhaps inevitable that a legal challenge...
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Trusts can offer great flexibility. They allow property to be ring-fenced; placing it in the hands of trustees who have wide powers to deal with it for the benefit of the named beneficiaries. Farmers in particular often find that the trust offers the most...
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An engineer who was seriously injured when he fell through a roof has won more than £164,000 in damages. The 66-year-old man worked for electronics and electrical engineering company Siemens. He was installing CCTV cameras at Liverpool Lime Street...
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The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 , which came into force on 26 May 2011, made changes to the rules that apply to websites using cookies and similar technologies to remember a user’s preferences....
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Many of us using email as a regular means of correspondence are aware of just how easy it is to send an email to the wrong person, particularly where we have a number of contacts with the same or similar names. Whether on a professional or personal level,...
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At the end of 2010, the Government commissioned an independent review into how the Intellectual Property system could better support and drive business growth. The review was published in May 2011 and made ten recommendations. Among the recommendations were...
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An ‘employee’ is provided with a statutory right to maternity leave, however, the same cannot be said for partners. There is some legal protection provided for pregnant partners, as the Equality Act 2010 seeks to ensure they do not suffer...
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Copyright protection rewards authors for the creation of original works. Copyright is intended to protect the method of expressing ideas, and not the actual ideas themselves. “Works” are considered under the main headings of: literary works...
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In the recent case of Francotyp-Postalia v Whitehead and others the High Court considered whether to sever a non-compete clause from a franchise agreement. Non-compete clauses (which are also referred to as restrictive covenants) help protect a franchisor...
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The scheme set up by the Government to assess the value of Northern Rock shares, for the purposes of deciding whether or not compensation was due to shareholders, concluded that without government support the shares would be valueless. A group of...
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A woman who lost a filling when she bit into an oven chip has won compensation from the manufacturer of the product. Susan Stapylton, 60, was eating Aunt Bessie’s oven chips. She bit into something solid and dislodged a filling in one of her wisdom...
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The Bribery Act 2010 came into force on 1 July 2011. Under Section 2 of the Act, it is an offence for a person to request, agree to receive or accept a financial or other advantage intending that, in consequence, a relevant function or activity should be...
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In Williamson & Soden Solicitors v Briars , the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) considered the employment status of a solicitor who was described as a partner of the firm and whose remuneration was by way of a ‘guaranteed profit share’...
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HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have had difficulties in the past in checking on property sales to ensure that the ‘principal private residence’ exemption for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is being used correctly. Notwithstanding the complexity of the...
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A golfer who was hit in the face by a stray golf ball has received compensation for her injuries. Rachel Davis was walking back to the car park from the ninth hole at Branston Golf and Country Club in Staffordshire when the accident happened. The ball hit...
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When a marriage or civil partnership breaks up and there is a significant risk that one party may move assets (normally cash in bank accounts) ‘out of sight’, it is sometimes possible to obtain a ‘freezing order’ to prevent the sums...
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The Forum of Private Business (FPB) has reported a noticeable increase in calls to its helpline from businesses that inadvertently included on their websites images that are protected by copyright and subsequently received demands for payment from the...
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A recent case illustrates how strong the evidence must be before the presumption that a person making a will has the mental capacity to do so will be overturned. It involved an elderly woman who died leaving an estate of a little under £150,000. Her...
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A retired man who has been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease several decades after exposure has received more than £141,000 in compensation. For more than 20 years, the man worked as a labourer at a paper mill, where he operated a paper...
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When a house is bought or sold, the prospective purchaser makes what are called ‘pre-contract enquiries’ in order to establish the exact details of the property being bought. These are normally in the form of a standard set of questions with any...
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It is common for service charges to be paid ‘on account’ of the annual cost, based on estimates, and a final account to be made up some time after the year end, based on the actual costs incurred. However, not all landlords are diligent about...
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There are generally strict time limits that apply when presenting a claim for unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunal (ET). Normally, a claim must be lodged before the end of a three-month period beginning with the effective date of termination (EDT)....
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Most people probably do not realise that a highway authority’s responsibility for keeping the roads safe to use is very limited. In practical terms, so many things can happen to a road that it would be unreasonable for the authority to be responsible...
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A shopper who was injured when he tried to lift a faulty box containing flat-pack furniture has won £11,000 in damages. The man was shopping at a major supermarket when the accident happened. He wished to buy the furniture and was attempting to remove...
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One of the rules that applies to the administration of estates is that whilst a person appointed as executor under a will can refuse to accept the appointment, once an executor ‘intermeddles’ in the estate, in principle he or she cannot then...
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A man who suffered damage to his hearing as a result of exposure to excessive noise in the workplace has won compensation from his employer. William Shipman, from West Yorkshire, had worked in a variety of jobs for a packaging company. During his...
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The penalties for engaging in anti-competitive behaviour are very substantial but, recognising that cartel (price-fixing) behaviour is difficult to detect, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has a ‘leniency programme’, which operates to give...
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The cardinal rule in proceedings involving children is that the welfare of the child comes first. In some cases, the interests of individual children in a family are sufficiently different for them to be considered separately. In a case involving a...
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A woman who missed out on her holiday after she fell down a set of temporary stairs at Birmingham International Airport has won £28,000 in compensation from Thomson Airways. Sheila Gilling, 69, was boarding a flight to Lanzarote when the accident...
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When an elderly woman passed away, her daughter, who was her personal representative, realised that some of her late mother’s land was occupied unlawfully by three people. She brought an action against them , seeking to recover possession of the land...
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In order for an asset to be removed from an estate for Inheritance Tax (IHT) purposes, the donor of the asset must retain no benefit from it after the legal title to it passes. Complex ‘reservation of benefit’ legislation exists to ensure that...
