FOR the few lawyers in the UK who practise contentious farming law the latest BSE scare has brought a deluge of enquiries from those involved in the meat trade. Farmers, livestock auctioneers and food companies have already asked lawyers to seek legal aid to enable counsel to explore possible courses of action against the Government. […]
English judges have come under attack for valuing property rights before human rights after the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling that upheld journalists’ rights to protect their sources. The criticism has come from Geoffrey Robertson QC, who defended Bill Goodwin, a journalist with The Engineer, who was fined £5,000 for protecting a source. “This […]
THE £800 million Halifax take-over of Clerical Medical is likely to herald a rash of life assurance “demutualisations”, according to the lawyers who helped forge the deal. Large teams of lawyers from City firms Lovell White Durrant and Linklaters & Paines worked on the take-over agreement which was announced in a blaze of publicity last […]
CIVIL Court reformer Lord Woolf and government minister Jonathan Evans head the speakers’ line-up for this year’s Legal Aid Practitioners Group conference. Legal Action Group director Roger Smith will join Woolf and Evans, minister at the LCD, at the event on 27 April. The stated aim of the conference is to “help practitioners steer a […]
THE GOVERNMENT has agreed to increase the “cooling-off” period for divorcing couples after a request was made by the Solicitors Family Law Association. The request, by SFLA chair Nigel Shepherd in a meeting with Jonathan Evans, junior Minister at the Lord Chancellor’s Department, was for couples to be given up to two years to finalise […]
Government proposals to allow public access to the VAT Register should prevent commercial exploitation of taxpayers’ information, warned the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIT) last week. And while there appears to be no strong argument for such a move, the government must also consider issues relating to taxpayers’ privacy before opening up the registers, said […]
THE CONTRACT to advise on the opening up of one the world’s largest virgin offshore territories to the oil industry has been won by Penningtons. The City firm beat off five other contenders for the right to advise the Falkland Islands government on the exploration and possible exploitation of 44,000 square miles of ocean. The […]
Frere Cholmeley Bischoff acted for new investment trust Finsbury Technology Trust
Making justice more accessible to all has to be the way of the future. New and imaginative thinking is called for on such an awesome project. However, there are signs that this is exactly what is happening. The whole legal aid debate is no longer black and white. Even Labour’s Shadow Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine […]
Stones Porter acted for GE Capital Green Property in its acquisition of a £32 million portfolio of industrial properties from Standard Life, made up of four industrial estates in London and one in Scotland. Nabbaro Nathanson acted for GE Capital and Herbert Smith for Standard Life.
Ashurst Morris Crisp has won a major intellectual property battle on behalf of Neutrogena Corporation against L’Oreal (UK) over the brand name Neutralia. The case, thought to be worth millions of pounds to the litigants, led to L’Oreal (UK) being injuncted and having to junk large amounts of product. For Ashursts, it is the biggest […]
TWO American law professors have helped the US Senate stop the legal race to the courthouse in shareholder class action suits. Professors Elliott J Weiss and John S Beckerman outlined in the Yale Law Journal how institutional investors could reduce agency costs in security class actions by appointing a “most adequate plaintiff”. Their work was […]