LEADING Scottish firms have hit out at English red tape which prevents them from practising under their own names south of the border. While English firms can set up branch offices under their own names in Scotland, they claim the Law Society of England and Wales refuses to allow them to do the same. Partner […]
With the judicial approval given to dispute resolvers at the end of last year, the English legal system is moving with uncharacteristic urgency away from the partisan, adversarial approach to litigation which has hitherto governed our processes. In the 19th century, as commerce progressed, three problems encouraged the judiciary to appoint their own experts to […]
Newbury District Council’s director of legal and administrative services, Mike Harris, has been elected as the new president of the Association of District Secretaries. In his election speech to the association’s annual conference last month Harris said he hoped to continue the progress made by his predecessors who had raised the profile of district secretaries. […]
MULTI-MEDIA specialist Laurence Kaye has jumped ship weeks before the merger of commercial firms Forsyte Kerman and Saunders Sobell Leigh & Dobin. He has joined The Simkins Partnership. Kaye, a founding partner of Saunders Sobell’s commercial department in 1980, will play a key role in shaping the future of The Simkins Partnership’s expanding multi-media section. […]
JONATHAN FRANCIS McDEVITT, 38, admitted 1982, practised at material times in partnership with White McDevitt, London WC1, fined u2,000 and ordered to pay u2,475 costs. Allegations substantiated he was guilty of unreasonable delay in conduct of professional business, failed to reply to correspondence from client, failed to perform professional undertakings within reasonable time, giving false […]
NEW York firm Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle is facing an industrial tribunal this week over allegations that it unfairly dismissed its London office manager. Former employee Joan Asghari, who was employed by the firm on a full-time basis from 1989, has made an application to the tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. Asghari, […]
THE PUBLIC Law Project (PLP) has put together a briefing document to lead lawyers through the “legal labyrinth” of community care. The guide may mean that more unlawful local authority decisions are challenged. Experts in public law say the “loose legal framework” of community care will inevitably spawn potential challenges. The Community Care Act 1990 […]
IN the US the recent filing of cases by Gibson Greeting Cards and Procter & Gamble against Bankers Trust, for damages suffered from derivative products, implies that derivative instrument cases require expert testimony. However, my experience of derivative instrument litigation is that technical issues that arise in these cases are not impenetrable. As in other […]
ROADS protesters are considering whether to mount a judicial review following the Government’s failure to publish a controversial report on its roads building policy. In a letter to Stephen Grosz of Bindman & Partners, which represents national anti-roads group Alarm UK, Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney denies he is under an obligation to publish the report. […]
THE Government is to petition the House of Lords against the Court of Appeal’s decision that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully by introducing a tariff-based compensation scheme for criminal injuries. But Ian Walker, partner at criminal injuries compensation firm Russell Jones & Walker, says: ” Michael Howard should scrap his appeal to the House of […]
The General Municipal Boilermakers (GMB) Union has started a second action in the High Court for a declaration that Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council will be breaching the acquired rights directive if it fails to secure comparable pension rights for staff in the transfer of employment. The new action is brought against the council and Brophy […]
A TEAM of Norton Rose assistants is defecting to Nabarro Nathanson amid reports of “widespread disaffection” within Norton’s marine litigation section. Two of the lawyers, Russell Gardner and Dominic Lang, are senior assistants. They are to be joined at Nabarros by Michele White and a fourth solicitor, Giles Searby, who was made redundant from Norton’s […]