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Over 30 years ago, the Pergau Dam affair, linking aid to trade with Malaysia burst into the papers as one of Britain’s biggest aid scandals. The government promised to supply aid to build a hydroelectric plant at Pergau in exchange for a major arms deal with Malaysia. The trouble was that the Pergau Dam project was deemed hopelessly uneconomic by officials in both Britain and Malaysia. In late 1994, the deal was declared unlawful in a landmark case in the High Court. In Episode 206 Liz Fisher, Professor of Environmental Law at Oxford University joins Sir Tim Lancaster, who was Permanent Secretary to the aid department at the time the Pergau Dam story broke. The case that followed – R v Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ex parte The World Development Movement Ltd [1995] marked a change in judges’ approach to government policy, and we’ll be discussing the much more interventionist role of judges as they participate in lawmaking today, including the recent climate change judgements in R (on the application of Finch on behalf of the Weald Action Group) (Appellant) v Surrey County Council and others (Respondents) – see my post on that case here – and more recently in Friends of the Earth v Secretary of State for Levelling Up.
His Honor Judge Mark Lucraft KC, Chief Coroner of England & Wales from 2016-2020 endorsed the guide saying the following:
“This important guide equips practitioners and coroners to recognise, raise and investigate issues of race or racism when they arise, sensitively and without reticence. It is an invaluable resource, not only for promoting racial justice, but for improving fact finding, increasing racial awareness, and providing better representation to families.”
For those looking to keep on top of their CPD over the summer, in Episode 204 Emma-Louise Fenelon interviews John Whitting KC and Robert Mills about recent developments in clinical negligence.
Robert Mills takes listeners through three recent cases on material contribution:
CNZ v Royal Bath Hospitals NHSFT & The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care [2023] EWHC 19 (KB)
CDE v Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust [2023] EWCA Civ 1330
Holmes v Poeton Holdings Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 1377
John Whitting KC outlines developments in the law of informed consent:
Bilal and Malik v St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2023] EWCA Civ 605
McCulloch and others v Forth Valley Health Board [2023] UKSC 26
And the episode concludes on a discussion of expert evidence:
Woods v Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2024] EWHC 1432 (KB)
CE (Cameroon) [2023] UKAITUR PA011122020
The podcast has previously covered expert evidence in the following episodes:
Disaster Avoidance for Experts with Margaret Bowron KC here
Disaster Avoidance for Experts with Neil Sheldon KC here
As a new Chief Coroner takes up the reins, Jim Duffy is joined by 1COR colleagues Richard Mumford and Lance Baynham to discuss the challenges facing the coronial system today. They look at recent cases on Article 2 ECHR and the ordering of fresh inquests, before reflecting on how the process works for those who come into contact with it.
His Honor Judge Mark Lucraft KC, Chief Coroner of England & Wales from 2016-2020 endorsed the guide saying the following:
“This important guide equips practitioners and coroners to recognise, raise and investigate issues of race or racism when they arise, sensitively and without reticence. It is an invaluable resource, not only for promoting racial justice, but for improving fact finding, increasing racial awareness, and providing better representation to families.”
In this series, Lucy McCann and Rajkiran Arhestey speak to Lady Justice Whipple, Sally Smith KC, Clodagh Bradley KC, Cara Guthrie, Judith Rogerson, Isabel McArdle, Emma-Louise Fenelon and Chloe Turvill about their experiences, in the hope of drawing out some key reflections and continuing the conversation about gender and the profession.
In this episode, Lucy and Kiran discuss a number of issues relating to parenthood, including pregnancy, maternity and paternity leave, childcare, gendered assumptions about caring and family life.
Following the Strasbourg Court’s dismissal of Kosher and Halal groups’ challenge to the ban on no-stun slaughter of food animals, Rosalind English talks to animal welfare campaignerPaula Sparks about the complex web of laws surrounding our treatment of farm animals in the abattoir. The welfare rules in the UK post Brexit require a level of “protection of animals at the time of killing” (known as PATOK), but there are many difficult areas where this protection is difficult and expensive to apply, such as the depopulation of intensively reared birds due to highly pathogenic avian flu, or the disposal of male chicks in hatcheries where only laying hens are commercially viable.
The cases and legislation referred to in the episode are as follows:
Personal data is intimately connected to privacy (art 8, ECHR) but is regulated by specific data protection regimes, such as the UK GDPR. Attention-grabbing legal issues arising out of Big Data dominate the public discourse around data protection: can generative AI use datasets without breaching intellectual property laws; how should the NHS use its mass of personal data; should we be compensated for the value of the data we provide to tech companies who go on to use it in advertising.
But on the other end of the scale from big data claims sits what might be thought of as ‘small data’ – issues around the use of one individual person’s data and the sometimes serious effects that can have. Jasper Gold joins Lucy McCann in a new episode of Law Pod UK to discuss the intersection of data protection, distress and personal injury, and consider some of the legal and tactical issues for litigants involved in these claims.
Brown v Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis & Anor(2016), Claim No. 3YM09078 (at first instance) and [2019] EWCA Civ 1724 (in the Court of Appeal, on the issue of qualified one way costs shifting)
Football fans everywhere will be familiar with reckless tackles, whether from their own Sunday league experience or as followers of the professional game. But when will a tackle amount to negligence and be actionable in a civil court, such that an injured player can sue their opponent?
In January this year, the Transparency Implementation Group Reporting Pilot was rolled out to 16 more courts across England. The pilot works on the basis of a presumption that journalists and legal bloggers may report on what they see and hear during family cases, subject to strict rules of anonymity.
In Episode 197 of Law Pod UK barrister Jim Duffy speaks to two experienced 1COR family law practitioners – Richard Ager and Clare Ciborowska. They explore the principles at stake and the on-the-ground impact of the pilot so far.
Yesterday (Tuesday 9th of April) the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg handed down three judgments from the Grand Chamber. Two of the applications were rejected on admissibility grounds. The third, a representative action by an NGO against the Swiss government, succeeded. It has caused something of a stir, to say the least.
The Strasbourg Court has broken new ground in finding that Switzerland has breached Article 8 of the ECHR, a provision which was drafted to protect the right to private and family life. In the case of Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and others v Switzerland, 16 of the 17 member panel concluded that Article 8 encompasses a right to effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life.
The case of Duarte Agostinho and five others v Portugal and 32 other states was one of the applications considered by the Grand Chamber. Emma Louise Fenelon advised Save the Children in its third party intervention in this case.
In this first episode, Lucy and Kiran ask ‘what’s the problem?’ and cover a number of issues including gendered assumptions and stereotypes, pressure at the Bar, equal pay, and the fair allocation of work.
In Episode 192 of Law Pod UK Rachel Marcus and Marcus Coates-Walker of 1 Crown Office Row join Lucy McCann to explore the principle of the scope of duty in the context of clinical negligence claims: first by analysing the decision in Khan v Meadows and then discussing how the courts have grappled with scope of duty issues since.
In Episode 191 Jon Metzer and Lucy McCann join Rosalind English to review the judgements and decisions of the past year that we at Law Pod UK consider to have the most important implications for the law. The cases we discuss are the following:
Episode 190: join environmental law expert David Hart KC of 1 Crown Office Row and Roy Harrison, professor of public health and expert in airborne emissions of Birmingham University, for a fascinating and disturbing discussion of two cases concerning the contamination of the environment in countries where enforcement standards are not as strong as they are in the West. You will hear both the scientific details of how these contaminants behave when they get into the environment, and the practicalities of getting class actions going in the courts to bring the polluters to book.
We have the Royal Society of Chemists to thank for this interesting discussion, in particularly the Society’s Toxicology Group which held a seminar in November to bring scientists and lawyers together to explore current perspectives on environmental toxic tort claims and review recent cases.
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