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R (on the application of Nicklinson and another) (Apellants) v Ministry of Justice (Respondent); R (on the application of AM) (AP) (Respondent) v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Appellant) [2014] UKSC 38 The Supreme Court has given judgment in the...
The BBC has reported that Merseyside Police has made a payment of £40,000 to a man for wrongful arrest in an out of court settlement. John Spencer said he was beaten and sprayed with CS spray in the incident in 2010 when an allegation of making...
Figures collated through Freedom of Information requests for Channel 4's Dispatches programme have revealed that out of 7963 complaints by the public of racism by forces over 8 years, only 77 were upheld. The figures related to 2005-2012 and...
A new law has been passed which allows injunctions to be obtained by housing providers, amongst others, against children as young as 10. The civil injunctions will replace ‘ASBOs’ which are currently dealt with in the criminal courts. Housing...
When purchasing a property as a concurrent estate, it is important to consider the different forms of legal ownership. It is no longer just married couples that choose to co-own properties. We are seeing more and more couples cohabiting, and first time...
This first appeared in the Wigan Observer on June 24th 2014. Picture the scene: you put an offer in for your dream house and the seller accepts it, the house is now yours – subject to the legal completion of course. But for an increasingly growing...
The man on the Clapham Omnibus may well think that the law on financial provision following divorce is clear... perhaps he would be forgiven for thinking it is a science and not an art but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the law is...
The Court of Appeal have held that the rights of a woman who died following a DNR notice being put in her medical records without her being consulted were breached. The case highlights the legal duty that hospitals have to consult patients before making DNR...
We have seen an upsurge in the amount of people in debt in recent years. Although the effects of the credit crunch are still biting there are many people still in huge amounts of debt from obtaining credit when it was more readily available. The need for...
This first appeared in the Wigan Observer on June 17th 2014 Q: Recent figures suggest nearly half of today’s 20 year olds will not get married. Why are more people deciding not to get married and what are the implications? A: On the 11th June...
Mediation has been around for many years and throughout that time it has been pushed by the government as the future for resolving family disputes. Do we really believe it is the way forward or is it just another cost cutting exercise by the government...
With the media in full tilt this week it would be easy to think that care homes are in crisis with inadequate care and bad publicity. This surrounds the serious case review following the 19 deaths at Orchid View Care Home, which closed in 2011. This is no...
The Law Society Gazette has reported that Judge Sir James Munby, president of the family division of the High Court has warned the the Court of Protection is likely to see a ten - fold increase in it's work load in relation to...
An investigation by the BBC has shown that complaints about universities has increased by 10% from 2010-11 to 2012-13. This large increase has been shown by responses from 120 universities in response to 142 FOI requests made by the...
Details of a case heard in April by the Court of Protection relating to the removal of an elderly woman from her house into a care home have recently been reported. District Judge Mort described the handling of the matter by the local authority in question...
The Court of Appeal has today handed down its judgment in the case of Huzar v Jet2.com. This case was brought to clarify the definition of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ in the context of flights that are delayed specifically due to technical...
The Government has announced new plans to increase the maximum fines for a variety of offences dealt with in the Magistrates Courts. The new plans will allow the Courts to levy much larger fines on offenders as a punitive measure. The main targets of the...
The well known Freedom of Information Act has now been able to show the true speeds reached by the drivers of this country in new data released recently. The public are often only aware of those cases that appear in the news and the higher speeds recorded...
The Association of Chief Police Officers is seeking to kick drink driving out of England and Wales during this summer’s World Cup. A month-long drink and drug enforcement campaign is being launched by the association which will result in an increase...
With all the recent changes to the legal system I am seeing a flurry of cases which are being referred to mediation. The costs of litigation are soaring despite the implementation of costs budgets. The reality bites when parties embroiled in litigation face...
In the last couple of weeks, at a conference at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the Communities and Local Government department is considering introducing legislation to stop ‘retaliatory eviction’, where tenants’...
John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoe accident in order to claim life insurance was ordered to pay a £40,000 lump sum over to the authorities after two of his pensions matured. John Darwin was reported missing in a canoe in the North...
The Government support of fracking was reiterated recently with proposed new rules regarding rights to access land. The proposal is that shale oil and gas companies are granted access to land below 400m from the surface. Those living above the land would be...
Criminals are devising ever more sophisticated ways to commit bank fraud, with incidents of courier fraud on the rise. Courier fraud is where a person is contacted by telephone and informed by the caller that their bank cards have been used fraudulently and...
This column first appeared in the Wigan Observer on June 3rd 2014. Q: How will recent changes to child maintenance affect new parents who wish to make payments through the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) ? A: There have been more changes in relation...
