‘The King’s Speech on 17 July 2024 announced the 35 Bills which are the legislative priority of the new Labour Government. Those relating to labour law are of particular interest to readers of this blog.’
UK Labour Law, 23rd July 2024
Source: uklabourlawblog.com
‘A West Yorkshire firm has been fined by the regulator for charging personal injury clients higher fees than allowed under the rules on damages-based agreements.’
Law Society's Gazette, 15th July 2024
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
‘In Sian Participation Corp v Halimedia International Ltd [2024] UKPC 16, Lords Briggs and Hamblen considered the issue of whether insolvency proceedings should be stayed where the underlying debt was covered by an arbitration agreement. In an appeal from the BVI, the Privy Council rejected the approach in Salford Estates (No 2) Ltd v Altomart Ltd (No 2) [2014] EWCA Civ 1575 where the English Court of Appeal stated that insolvency proceedings should be stayed in favour of arbitration proceedings unless there are exceptional circumstances (“the Salford Approach”). This means that even if the debtor company could not show that the debt is genuinely disputed on substantial grounds (a relatively low threshold), the petitioning creditor will still have to go through the arbitration process to establish the debt before seeking a winding-up order.’
Wilberforce Chambers, 21st June 2024
Source: www.wilberforce.co.uk
‘The government is still considering concerns expressed about the retrospective effect of the bill to overturn last year’s Supreme Court ruling in PACCAR, a minister said yesterday.’
Legal Futures, 30th April 2024
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The High Court has ruled that a law firm and four of its former partners must repay money borrowed under loan agreements with a husband and his wife.’
Legal Futures, 23rd April 2024
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The UK and US have signed a landmark deal to work together on testing advanced artificial intelligence (AI).’
BBC News, 2nd April 2024
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘An employment tribunal has struck out a solicitor’s breach of contract claim based on a business agreement to transfer his practice to another firm, which was then to employ him.’
Legal Futures, 2nd April 2024
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has granted permission for another rewritten litigation funding agreement (LFA) to go before the Court of Appeal.’
Legal Futures, 12th March 2024
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The Court of Appeal is set to rule on whether a litigation funding agreement (LFA) that was amended to take account of the Supreme Court ruling in PACCAR is valid.’
Legal Futures, 23rd January 2024
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The Court of Appeal has held that the severance of terms rendering a CFA unenforceable was not available to solicitors on public policy grounds and that consequently their clients were entitled to the return of sums paid on account. The decision in Diag Human v Volterra Fietta will ring alarm bells for litigation funders who might be contemplating launching similar arguments as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision in R (on the application of PACCAR) v Competition Appeal Tribunal.’
Gatehouse Chambers, 10th October 2023
Source: gatehouselaw.co.uk
‘Litigation funders will have to redraft the terms of their agreements following a widely awaited ruling by the Supreme Court this morning. In PACCAR Inc & Ors v Competition Appeal Tribunal & Ors, four out of five justices ruled that such agreements fall within the statutory definition of damages-based agreements (DBAs). As they had been entered in to without satisfying conditions for DBAs, they were therefore unenforceable.’
Law Society's Gazette, 26th July 2023
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
‘Agreements with third-party litigation funders are damages-based agreements (DBAs), the Supreme Court said today in a ruling likely to invalidate almost all existing arrangements.’
Legal Futures, 26th July 2023
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘This appeal concerns a matter of statutory interpretation in the context of litigation funding. Litigation funding involves the agreement of a third party (with no prior connection to the litigation) to finance all or part of the legal costs of certain litigation, in return for a percentage of any damages recovered should the funded litigant be successful. In particular, this appeal concerns whether each of the agreements to provide this funding, known as litigation funding agreements (“LFAs”), constitute a “damages-based agreement” (“DBA”), a term given a specific definition by statute. In order to be lawful and enforceable a DBA has to satisfy certain conditions. The LFAs have been entered into without satisfying those conditions, so the question whether they constitute DBAs is critical for their enforceability.’
UKSC Blog, 26th July 2023
Source: ukscblog.com
‘The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has secured agreements from Sainsbury’s and Asda to stop using unlawful anti-competitive land agreements that prevent competitors from establishing stores near to their own supermarkets.’
Local Government Lawyer, 14th June 2023
Source: www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk
‘Sadly, it appears that it is necessary to revive the long lapsed tradition of the Nearly Legal Naughty Step post.
We have encountered a number of councils putting, or trying to put, damn silly clauses in their tenancy agreements for secure tenants, and then threatening to evict tenants who breach these damn silly clauses. There was Sandwell silencing tenants, for example (and they were not alone in trying to include such a clause). And there was the spectacle of Wandsworth attempting to impose a clause forbidding the tenant, their household, or their visitors from behaving badly anywhere in the whole borough, on pain of eviction. That one – which is all too relevant for what follows – ended in humiliation for Wandsworth when they actually tried to use it.’
Nearly Legal, 6th June 2023
Source: nearlylegal.co.uk
‘The ability of lay clients to understand the Law Society’s model conditional fee agreement was questioned by three of the most senior judges in England and Wales yesterday in a much-awaited Court of Appeal hearing.’
Law Society's Gazette, 5th October 2022
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
‘Arbitration agreements requiring that the arbitrator be a “commercial man” or otherwise specifying a protected characteristic will be unenforceable under Law Commission proposals published today.’
Legal Futures, 22nd September 2022
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘The High Court has upheld a decision that a law firm which charged its client nearly $3m under an unenforceable conditional fee agreement (CFA) has to repay the money.’
Legal Futures, 2nd August 2022
Source: www.legalfutures.co.uk
‘This time last year, the controversial United Kingdom Internal Market Bill was ping-ponging between the Commons and Lords. A key point of contention concerned the relationship between the ‘market access’ principles now enshrined in the Act – the mutual recognition and non-discrimination principles – and future exercises of devolved rule-making. Should post-Brexit internal regulatory divergence be legally disciplined by a strong version of the mutual recognition principle or insulated from such forces? As I explained in a contribution to this blog a year ago, a partial answer can be found in Sections 10(2) and 18(3) of the Act which allows the Secretary of State, by regulations, to amend Schedule 1 (goods) and Schedule 2 (services) to exclude the outcome of a ‘common framework agreement’ from the scope of application of the market access principles. The aim of this new post is to consider how this power is likely to work in light of a written ministerial statement made on 9 December 2021 setting out the mechanism for its implementation.’
UK Constitutional Law Association, 15th December 2021
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org
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