News Category 2
Can You Have Your Cake and Eat It? - Helen Tinkler, CILEx, CILEx Law School, Bar Standards Board and Whatley Weston & Fox
21/08/14. Following Denton v TH White Ltd; Decadent Vapours Ltd v Bevan; Utilise TDS Ltd v Davies [2014] EWCA Civ 906, litigation life might have seemed momentarily sunlit and calm as we slipped into the summer months but now the heat is up for litigators preparing statements of case. Pervez Akhtar v Jordan Boland (2014) EWCA Civ 872., a small claims matter which found its way to the Court of Appeal, has everything to do with practice and procedure, tactical drafting of statements of case and applications and acting in the client's best interests and far less to do with the merits of the respective parties' cases.
The claim, totalling £6392.80 arose from a road traffic accident. The defendant, in his defence, admitted the sum of £2496 and made a specific averment that the matter should be allocated to the small claims track. This was prior to the threshold being raised to £10,000. Under CPR14.1(1) a party may admit the truth of the whole or any part of another party’s case and may do so by giving notice in writing such as in a statement of case or by letter CPR14.1(2). Where the defendant makes an admission the claimant has a right to enter judgment CPR 14.1(4).
Despite the clear and emphatic wording of the admissions, the claimant sought to argue that...
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Mcgregor v. Genco (FC) Ltd: Time and Duty - Simon Morrow & Malcolm Keen, BLM
16/08/14. An employer’s duty at common law is to take reasonable care to protect its employees from a foreseeable risk of injury. In mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illness cases, foreseeability of the risk of injury has a particularly significant role. The recent High Court mesothelioma case McGregor v. Genco (FC) Ltd [2014] EWHC 1376 (QB) provides guidance on considering liability today for a breach of duty which occurred many years ago.
The decision
In McGregor, the claimant worked at a department store in Liverpool in the 1970s and early 1980s. For a period in 1976, demolition and installation work on escalators took place. Asbestos insulating board was used in the old and the new escalators. The claimant described her workplace as extremely dusty. She was diagnosed with mesothelioma in August 2012. The judge dismissed the claim. She accepted that the claimant was exposed to asbestos for a period of months in 1976, that exposure was light, but that this exposure to asbestos probably caused her mesothelioma. The judge concluded that the safety precautions in place (floor to ceiling enclosure) were adequate at the time, though not by today’s standards. She then considered whether there was a further duty to make enquiries as the works progressed. The judge found that there was nothing which ought to have alerted the defendant that the precautions were inadequate and required alteration. She concluded that there was no reason in...
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PI Practitioner, August 2014
16/08/14. Each issue a particular topic is highlighted, citing some of the useful cases and other materials in that area. You can also receive these for free by registering for our PI Brief Update newsletter. Just select "Free Newsletter" from the menu at the top of this page and fill in your email address.
Denton & ors v TH White Ltd & ors [2014] EWCA Civ 906
In an important judgment, the Court of Appeal provided further guidance on Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 1537 regarding the proper, post-Jackson reform, approach to take towards relief from sanctions under CPR r 3.9. The Mitchell test had been criticised for downplaying the requirement to consider all the circumstances of the case and treating the need for...
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Court of Protection in the Spotlight - Eddie Fardell, Thomson Snell & Passmore
13/08/14. The Court of Protection found itself in the spotlight again recently when Cathy Watson, the mother of a girl severely injured at birth, was found guilty of plundering her daughter’s damages award. She was sentenced earlier this year, and handed down a prison term of 5 ½ years. Her ex-husband, Robert Hills, who admitted his wrongdoing, was handed down a term of 3 years 4 months. Following their conviction late last year, the popular press took delight in reporting that the case “exposed shocking failures by the Court of Protection”.
This was a terrible abuse of a catastrophically injured young girl awarded a substantial sum - £2.6m – to care for her for the rest of her life. Apparently funds remain to pay for her care for only a few years and she will then have to be publicly funded. The quality of her care is bound to be considerably affected.
This is not the first time such abuse has been revealed, but this one is particularly shocking. So why was this woman in a position to perpetrate this obnoxious crime? Why was not a professional deputy appointed?
It is of course the case that anyone can be appointed as a deputy by the Court of Protection. The applicant has to submit a declaration to the Court, who must be satisfied they are a fit and proper person to act; I do not know what scrutiny is given to the declaration form by the Court during the application process, but the questions focus primarily on whether the applicant has been made bankrupt or has judgment debts...
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Dealing With Setbacks - Bill Braithwaite QC, Head of Exchange Chambers
10/08/14. I saw a young client recently who has been really struggling to get his life back after catastrophic brain injury. He has been growing through his teen years, coping with difficult family life, and gradually discovering how much he can't do. Along the route, he has been to inappropriate schooling, and has been generally misunderstood. Not surprisingly, his behaviour has been poor, and he has alienated people.
A good brain injury case manager can help with those problems, though, and that has gradually happened. It’s important for outsiders, such as litigation lawyers and experts, to realise that the process of helping a severely brain injured young man to grow up can be extremely difficult, and can take years, with many setbacks on the way.
What I find irritating about litigation experts who visit patients in those circumstances is that the injured person can't win. If he is in a really bad position, he doesn’t attract sympathy; if he’s doing his best, the expert thinks that everything will be fine. There is so often a lack of recognition that improvement and stability are often driven and maintained only by significant input of support, often multi-disciplinary.
Bill Braithwaite QC
Head of Exchange Chambers
This article was first published at http://billbraithwaite.com/blog/
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![Appeal judge rules that credit hire company has no costs liability following a finding of fundamental dishonesty in personal injury case: RSA v. Fastrack Solutions Limited [2023] 4 WLUK 92 - David Bowden, Erimus Chambers](/content/images/resized/images/stories/carkeys_72_72.jpg)
