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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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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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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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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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After years of litigation, a young woman who suffered life-changing injuries when she was hit by a car as a child has been awarded a compensation settlement worth more than £9 million. Leigh Ann Blinkhorn, now 23, was seven years old when the accident...
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The Supreme Court has denied HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) the right of appeal in a tax case involving a series of transactions that were carried out for no commercial purpose but which led to a tax saving by the taxpayer. The decision represents a blow for...
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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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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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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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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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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...
