“Hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees convicted of immigration-related offences such as failure to produce a passport may have been the victims of miscarriages of justice, the Gazette can reveal.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 14th June 2012
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
“Anders Behring Breivik knew what he was doing, and he knew it was wrong. Claiming insanity is not enough to protect a person from the consequences of his own evil acts. Alternatively, he must be mad. His killing spree was so shocking and so utterly at odds with normality as to be sufficient evidence of insanity in its own right. Res ipsa loquitur. And there you have it – the whole point of the argument about ‘criminal insanity’, which has been running for centuries.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 18th April 2012
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“Sky News’s decision to approve the hacking of emails belonging to John Darwin, the once-missing, presumed-dead ‘canoe man’, can be argued to be one of those finely balanced editorial decisions. The public interest argument runs fairly straightforwardly, after all. Darwin pleaded guilty to deception in March 2008 – you will recall he went out to sea in a canoe and somehow paddled his way from the north-east to the Panama canal, suggesting he was not so dead after all. But his wife, Anne, was going to trial – a life insurance policy had been cashed in by her – and it was at that point Sky’s journalist, Gerard Tubb, was given the green light to try to access John Darwin’s email communications. As he did so, he uncovered information that made it clear that Anne Darwin was in on the plot, and having shared this with Cleveland police, the broadcaster believes it helped secure her conviction and produced a very detailed post-conviction backgrounder.”
The Guardian, 8th April 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“For the last year or so, the law of nuisance has been in a state of flux pending this appeal. In this case about an odorous landfill, Coulson J had ruled that compliance with the waste permit amounted to a defence to a claim in nuisance, and that a claimant had to prove negligence in the operation of the landfill before he could claim in nuisance. The Court of Appeal has today reversed this decision.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 19th March 2012
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
Regina v Dowds: [2012] EWCA Crim 281; [2012] WLR (D) 43
“The reformulation of the statutory conditions for diminished responsibility was not intended to reverse the well established rule that voluntary acute intoxication was incapable of being relied on to found diminished responsibility and the presence of a recognised medical condition, although necessary, was not always a sufficient condition to raise the issue of diminished responsibility.”
WLR Daily, 22nd February 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“One of the country’s leading prosecutors has defended the stiff sentences handed out to hundreds of rioters in London last summer and derided the excuses given by some of them in court.”
The Guardian, 30th January 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“The court case of a severely disabled man seeking permission for a doctor to ‘lawfully’ end his life should not go ahead, the Ministry of Justice says.”
BBC News, 23rd January 2012
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
“Contrary to press reports last week, there is no defence to murder in England and Wales that the killing was a crime of passion.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 23rd January 2012
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“A partner’s affair can no longer be treated by courts as a defensible reason to lose control and kill – but it can be a factor.”
The Guardian, 23rd January 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Regina v Clinton; Regina v Parker; Regina v Evans [2011] EWCA Crim 2; [2012] WLR (D) 2
“For the purposes of the partial defence to murder of loss of self-control, where such loss of self-control was triggered by sexual infidelity that could not, on its own, qualify as a trigger for the purposes of the defence. Nevertheless, where an admissible trigger might be present, the evidence relating to sexual infidelity might arise for consideration as part of the context in which to evaluate that trigger and whether the statutory ingredients required of the qualifying trigger might be established.”
WLR Daily, 17th January 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“A 45-year-old man jailed for murdering his wife after she left him and found a new man has had his conviction quashed.”
BBC News, 17th January 2012
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Delaney v Pickett and another; [2011] EWCA Civ 1532; [2011] WLR (D) 390
“In looking to the possible application of the defence of ‘ex turpi’ in a claim of negligence arising out of a road traffic accident it could be crucial to ask whether the injury in issue was truly a consequence of the claimant’s unlawful act or whether it was a consequence of the unlawful act only in the sense that it would not have happened if the claimant had not been committing an unlawful act. In other words, could one say that, although the damage would not have happened but for the tortious conduct of the defendant, it was caused by the criminal act of the claimant; or was the position, rather, that, although the damage would not have happened without the criminal act of the claimant, it was caused by the tortious act of the defendant ?.”
WLR Daily, 21st December 2011
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“This was a rolled up permission to appeal and appeal hearing (on which more later) for appeal to a Circuit Judge from a possession order made by a District Judge at Bromley. At issue was whether the District Judge was wrong to reject a) a proportionality defence and b) a gateway B public law defence arising from Lewisham’s failure to follow its own policy. It is interesting as an example of proportionality/gateway B defences in action in the County Court, but also somewhat frustrating, for reasons which will become clear.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 1st January 2012
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
“In the first ‘misuse of private information’ trial against a newspaper since Max Mosley in 2008, Mr Justice Nicol dismissed a claim brought by England and Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand against the Sunday Mirror.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 2nd October 2011
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
Regina v Unah [2011] WLR (D) 225
“Where a defendant sought to rely on the defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ for the purposes of the offence of possessing a false identity document, contrary to section 25(5) of the Identity Cards Act 2006, the fact that the defendant did not know or believe that the document was false was not of itself a reasonable excuse. However, a defendant was entitled to ask the jury to consider objectively whether he had a reasonable excuse for possessing the material, and the fact that he did not know or believe that it was a false document, because of the circumstances in which it had been obtained, might well have a bearing on that question.”
WLR Daily, 12th July 2011
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Regina v Hichens [2011] WLR (D) 193
“On a charge of common assault the defence that the action was taken by way of self-defence to prevent a person from committing a crime or a breach of the peace was available even if the act of violence was not against the person concerned but was against an innocent third party.”
WLR Daily, 14th June 2011
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Please note that once a case has been fully reported in one of the ICLR series the corresponding WLR Daily summary is removed.
“Journalists will be able to rely on the defence that they published responsibly and in the public interest in defamation cases, according to reforms proposed by the Government. A defence of ‘honest opinion’ will replace that of ‘fair comment’.”
OUT-LAW.com, 16th March 2011
Source: www.out-law.com
Read the draft defamation bill and consultation in full
The Guardian, 15th March 2011
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“New measures to support free speech, enable people to protect their reputation and help stop the use of unreasonable threats of being sued for libel were announced today.”
Ministry of Justice, 15th March 2011
Source: www.justice.gov.uk
“Major changes to Britain’s antiquated defamation laws will be outlined by ministers today with the publication of a bill to provide greater protection for free speech and an end to ‘libel tourism’.”
The Independent, 15th March 2011
Source: www.independent.co.uk
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