Author: David Hart QC

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A “festival of mendacity”; telling the truth no more than a “lifestyle choice”

Rashid v. Munir et al, Turner J, High Court, Leeds, 22 May 2018 – read judgment here

I promise you that this post will be entirely GDPR-free, despite its date.

Judges go about saying people are lying in different ways, from the tip-toeing around the idea of deceit to the full-blooded blast. This judgment, and that from which it is an appeal, are towards the latter end of the spectrum.

I welcome this frankness; if you, a judge, think that someone is telling you a tissue of lies, then you should say so in terms.

Neither judge held back, as we shall see. Enjoy.

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Supreme Court: unfairness/equal treatment only an aspect of irrationality

R (o.t.a. Gallaher et al) v. Competition and Markets Authority  [2018] UKSC 25, 16 May 2018, read judgment

UK public law is very curious. You could probably write much of its substantive law on a couple of postcards, and yet it continues to raise problems of analysis and application which tax the system’s finest legal brains.

This much is clear from today’s Supreme Court’s decision that notions of public law unfairness and equal treatment are no more than aspects of irrationality.

The CMA (then the OFT) were investigating tobacco price-fixing. Gallaher et al reached an early settlement with the OFT, at a discount of their fines. Another price-fixer, TMR, did likewise, but extracted an assurance from the OFT that, if there were a successful appeal by others against the OFT decision, the OFT would apply the outcome of any appeal to TMR, and accordingly withdraw or vary its decision against TMR.

6 other parties then appealed successfully. TMR asked and got its money back from the OFT relying on the assurance.

Gallaher et al tried to appeal out of time, and were not allowed to. They then turned round to the OFT and said, by reference to TMR: why can’t we have our money back?

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Groundhog Day for air pollution breaches: Government loses again


NO2_PicR (ClientEarth No.3) v Secretary of State for Environment, Food &  Rural Affairs, Garnham J, 21 February 2018, judgment here 

DEFRA has been found wanting again, in its latest attempt to address nitrogen dioxide in air. This is the third time. Yet DEFRA’s own analysis suggests that some 23,500 people die every year because of this pollutant.

I have told the story in many posts before (see list at bottom), but the UK has been non-compliant with EU Directive 2008/50 on nitrogen dioxide (et al) since 2010. The Directive requires that the period in which a state is obliged to remedy any non-compliance is to be “as short as possible”: Article 23.

We have now had 3 Air Quality Plans, the first produced in 2011 and quashed in 2015, and the second produced later in 2015, declared unlawful by Garnham J in November 2016.

The third, in this judgment, was dragged out of DEFRA in July 2017, after various attempts to delay things.  

So why was it decided to be unlawful?

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Landmark A-G opinion: EU must respect right of self-determination of Western Sahara

wsaharaR (o.t.a. Western Sahara Campaign UK) v. HMRC and DEFRA, Court of Justice of the European Union, opinion of Advocate-General Wathelet, 10 January 2018 – read here

The A-G has just invited the CJEU to conclude that an EU agreement with Morocco about fishing is invalid on international law grounds. His opinion rolls up deep issues about NGO standing, ability to rely on international law principles, justiciability, and standard of review, into one case. It also touches on deeply political, and foreign political, issues, and he is unapologetic about this.  That, he concludes, is a judge’s job, both at EU and international court level – if the issues are indeed legal.

The opinion is complex and I summarise it in the simplest terms. But here goes.

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Does “damage” go wider than injury? Supreme Court on jurisdiction

Four Seasons Holdings v. Brownlie [2017] UKSC 80, 19 December 2017, read judgment

Professor Ian Brownlie Q.C., an eminent international lawyer, and members of his family were killed in a road accident in Egypt, when on their way to Al-Fayoum. His widow, also injured, had booked the driver through their hotel, the Four Seasons in Cairo.

The family wished to bring proceedings in the UK against the hotel in respect of the driver. However, the key defendant (Holdings) was incorporated in British Columbia, and the issue which got to the Supreme Court was the issue of jurisdiction.

The family said that there was a contract for the trip with Holdings, and further that Holdings were vicariously liable in tort for the negligence of the driver. Holdings had been less than transparent at earlier stages of the proceedings, but, after the Supreme Court required it to give a full account of itself, it emerged that it was as the name suggested – a non-trading holding company which had never operated the Cairo hotel, even though other companies in the group were involved with the hotel.

On that ground, Holdings’ appeal was allowed. The unanimous Court concluded that there was no claim in either contract or in tort. In simple terms, Holdings was nothing to do with the booking of the driver by the hotel.

But the lasting interest in the case lay in the question of whether you can establish qualifying “damage” in tort in the UK even if you are injured abroad, and on this the Court was split 3-2.

Let me set the scene for this, before telling you the result.

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Reasons and planners again: Supreme Court

13454123443_80fef9d87e_bDover District Council v. CPRE Kent [2017] UKSC 79, 6 December 2016, read judgment

The Supreme Court has just confirmed that this local authority should have given reasons if it wished to grant permission against the advice of its own planning officers for a controversial development to the west of Dover. 

The interest is in the breadth of the decision – how far does it extend?

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Polluter Pays Principle: in Tobago, in the EU/UK, and in UK post-Brexit

Fishermen & Friends of the Sea v. The Minister of Planning, Housing and the Environment (Trinidad and Tobago) [2017] UKPC 37, 27 November 2017 – read judgment

A vignette of where

(1) Trinidad and Tobago is,

(2) the EU/UK is,

(3) where Michael Gove may wish us to be post-Brexit,

on the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP), a key environmental principle.

As we shall see, in legal terms, the expansiveness of (1) and (2) contrasts with the potential parsimony of (3).

Now (3) may be better than nothing, as per the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, i.e, no enforceable environmental principles at all. But that does not mean we should not aspire for more. After all, as we shall see, the PPP is hardly a racy new entrant into environmental law.

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