Media By: Rosalind English
9 August 2018 by Rosalind English
In our ongoing reposts of Professor Catherine Barnard’s series 2903 CB, Catherine discusses her reaction to the publication of the government’s White Paper, the Cabinet resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson, and the negotiating positions of the EU since the UK triggered Article 50 in March 2017.
Listen to Episode 41 of Law Pod UK Brexit – The White Paper now.
Available for free download from iTunes, Audioboom, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate and leave a review to support our podcast.
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31 July 2018 by Rosalind English
JT v First Tier Tribunal [2018] EWCA Civ 1735 – read judgment
Between 1968 and 1975 the appellant JT was repeatedly assaulted and raped by her stepfather in her family home. Many years later, her assailant was prosecuted for those crimes and convicted on all counts in 2012. As a victim of violent sexual crime, JT applied for compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Her application was refused on the basis of the “same roof” rule, which stated that an award would not be made in respect of a criminal injury sustained before 1 October 1979
if, at the time of the incident giving rise to that injury, the applicant and the assailant were living together as members of the same family
This criterion may sound odd to anyone with a professional or even mild interest in crime stories, where the prime suspect is considered to be a member of the family of the victim, whether of rape, abuse, or even murder. But the thinking behind the rules – and there has to be a bright line for eligibility – was that there should be a requirement that the victim and the assailant no longer live together. This would at least suffice to ensure that the rapist or abuser would not benefit from the award accruing to his victim, and, if possible, is brought to justice.
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27 July 2018 by Rosalind English
In our latest podcast, Rosalind English talks to University of Pennsylvania professor of regulation Cary Coglianese and Yale researcher David Lehr about the future of rule making with machine-learning algorithms at our side. Regulation by robot; adjudication by algorithm: a different, but fairer world?
Episode 40 available for free download from iTunes, Audioboom or wherever you get your podcasts.
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18 July 2018 by Rosalind English
Sherratt v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2018] EWHC 1746 (QB) (16 July 2018) – read judgment
This was an appeal on a preliminary issue from the decision of David Berkeley QC, sitting as the Recorder below. The question was whether the defendant chief constable owed a duty of care to the claimant’s partner, who had committed suicide.
The Recorder found that the defendant, either by his officers, employees or agents, failed expeditiously and/or adequately to deal with, and/or respond to, the information conveyed to them concerning the deceased in a 999 call made by the deceased’s mother.
King J upheld the Recorder’s findings and dismissed the appeal.
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15 July 2018 by Rosalind English
On 16thJuly 2018 the Supreme Court will begin to hear legal arguments on the appeal of the children against the judgment of the Court of Appeal in CN and Anor v Poole Borough Council [2017] EWCA Civ 2185
I wrote up the original judgment here. The appeal was expedited and the Court will now consider the extent to which local authorities owe a common law duty to protect children from harm arising within the community where they live.
Background
A quick reminder of the somewhat remarkable facts of the case. In 2006 Mrs N and her two sons CN and GN, then aged nine and seven (one of whom was severely disabled), moved to a housing estate in Poole. The accommodation was arranged by the council as the local housing authority. Over the ensuing years, the family suffered from the effects of extreme anti-social activities of a neighbouring family. This behaviour was frequently reported to the property owners, officers of the council and local police. A measure of the seriousness of the case can be gained by the fact that the Home Office became involved and commissioned an independent case review which reported critically on the reaction of the agencies. The appellants’ distress was so great that one of them attempted suicide. They continued to suffer from their neighbours’ behaviour until they were provided with alternative accommodation in December 2011.
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10 July 2018 by Rosalind English
Subscribers to the UKHRB will have received an earlier version of our announcement of recent podcasts by Emma-Louise Fenelon. There was a mix-up in the episode numbers and links which has now been corrected. Apologies for any confusion this may have led to, and please enjoy the properly attributed and linked recording!
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10 July 2018 by Rosalind English
Emma-Louise Fenelon recently interviewed Richard Booth QC about a successful injunction application to prevent a gross misconduct disciplinary hearing. You can hear the interview on Episode 39 of Law Pod UK.
The Claimant, represented by Jeremy Hyam QC, was a consultant forensic psychiatrist whose employment duties included working on the healthcare wing at Lewes prison. Following the death in custody of an inmate on the healthcare wing who had been under the Claimant’s care, the Trust initiated an investigation into the Claimant’s conduct and capability. The report of the investigation made a number of findings of failure to meet professional standards in particular with respect to the record keeping of ward reviews, but put them in the context of an under-resourced prison service. Based on the report, the Trust’s case manager purported to convene a hearing to consider disciplinary action for gross misconduct against the Claimant.
An injunction was sought to prevent such hearing going ahead on the basis that, taken at its highest, the content of the investigation report did not justify a charge of gross misconduct; that the Trust’s policy definition of gross misconduct was lower that normally set by the common law; and that the Case Manager’s management statement of case went beyond the findings in the investigation report. Granting the injunction on an interim basis, the Court concluded that there were serious issues to be tried on all the issues raised by the Claimant and the balance of convenience was clearly in favour of the grant of the injunction.
The judgment can be found here: Bailii.
Law Pod UK continues to go from strength to strength and has surpassed 55k listens. All episodes are freely available to listen or download from a number of podcast platforms, including iTunes, Audioboom, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate and leave a review to support our podcast.
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26 June 2018 by Rosalind English
Two years from the vote to leave the European Union, Catherine Barnard, Professor of EU Law at Cambridge, considers the rocks and hard places of the Brexit negotiations. She speculates on what is meant by what exactly is meant by staying “within the remit of the CJEU”, something that has drawn a lot of fire, but has no legal meaning.
We may all be jaded with Brexit coverage. But do listen to Catherine’s podcast, it is remarkably unpartisan and clear on the facts.
Catherine’s series 2903cb is freely available on soundcloud and our repost is on iTunes and other podcast platforms, Episode 38 of Law Pod UK.
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15 June 2018 by Rosalind English
In Episode 35 Matthew Hill discusses the lessons and warnings from the Bloody Sunday inquiry and the Hillsborough inquest in a talk recorded at One Crown Office Row’s 2018 seminar.
In Episode 36 , drawn from the same seminar, Emma-Louise Fenelon discusses the challenges around secrecy, anonymity and public information in major inquests and inquiries
In Episode 37 Gideon Barth considers when public inquiries are established or inquests reopened.
Law Pod UK is available for free download from iTunes, The Podcast App, Overcast, Audioboom and a number of other podcast platforms. Please rate and review us to help Law Pod UK continue to grow.
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7 June 2018 by Rosalind English
In Episode 34 of Law Pod UK, Rosalind English talks to Professor Karen Yeung of Birmingham University about questions of civil liability of algorithm-run systems, the difficulties of regulating something we cannot truly predict, and the so-called “alignment problem” – how to align the utility function of intelligent machines with the values of the human race, which are very difficult to define.
Professor Yeung is Interdisciplinary Fellow in both the Law and Computer Science Schools at Birmingham, and recently gave evidence before the House of Lords Select Committee on AI. We posted on the report ‘AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?’ in April.
Law Pod UK is available for free download from iTunes, Overcast and Audioboom.
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23 May 2018 by Rosalind English
This week Irish voters will decide whether there should be a continuing constitutional protection for the ‘unborn’. Novelist Sally Rooney’s article this week’s edition of the London Review of Books is short, but very well worth the read.
Pregnancy, entered into willingly, is an act of generosity, a commitment to share the resources of life with another incipient being. Such generosity is in no other circumstances required by law.
No legal system will force another person to donate living tissue, no matter how needy the recipient. An organ donor is not bound to the world’s needy recipients. Unless, Rooney points out, the law is concerning itself with a foetus.
If the foetus is a person, it is a person with a vastly expanded set of legal rights, rights available to no other class of citizen: the foetus may make free, non-consensual use of another living person’s uterus and blood supply, and cause permanent, unwanted changes to another person’s body. In the relationship between foetus and woman, the woman is granted fewer rights than a corpse.
The referendum this week concerns the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, introduced in the early eighties, which protects ‘the unborn’.
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16 May 2018 by Rosalind English
“When we leave the EU, we will be able to build on the successes achieved through our membership, and address the failures, to become a world-leading protector of the natural world. We have also published the 25 Year Environment Plan, which sets out this Government’s ambition for this to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than that in which we inherited it. These good intentions must be underpinned by a strengthened governance framework that supports our environmental protection measures and creates new mechanisms to incentivise environmental improvement.”
Michael Gove has announced his plan for a UK Commission on the environment, for which the consultation paper is out now. The paper sets out the principles laid behind the Environmental Principles and Governance Bill which will be published in November this year. This proposed law is said to mark the creation of a “new, world-leading, statutory and independent environmental watchdog to hold government to account on our environmental ambitions and obligations once we have left the EU.”
The proposed Bill may not see the light of day, if today’s events are anything to go by. This afternoon the House of Lords voted (294:244) to include the principles of environmental protection in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, rather than introducing a separate piece of primary legislation as set out in this consultation document: the successful amendment is first up here.
However things turn out in the Commons, it is worth attending to the plans for maintaining and enhancing environmental protection in a post-Brexit UK.
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16 May 2018 by Rosalind English
PW v Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Trust and others (28 April 2018) [2018] EWCA Civ 1067 – read judgment
The Court of Appeal has refused to interfere with the Court of Protection’s decision that it was not in the best interests of a 77-year-old man with end stage dementia to be discharged home with a nasogastric tube inserted for feeding purposes. The COP judge said that she was not bound to continue life. The sanctity of life is not absolute.” Palliative care “would make [the patient] as comfortable as possible and ensure his dignity and comfort. He will pass away with palliation in a dignified way.”
The applicant applied for permission to appeal against a Court of Protection’s determination of his father’s best interests pursuant to Section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and against a transparency order preventing the publication of any material identifying his father or the family.
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16 May 2018 by Rosalind English
Dominic Ruck-Keene posted earlier on the order from the High Court that Google “delist” links in its search results to articles about the spent conviction of a businessman. You can hear him discussing the so-called “right to be forgotten” with Rosalind English in the latest episode of Law Pod UK.
Law Pod UK is available for free download on iTunes, Audioboom and Overcast.
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11 May 2018 by Rosalind English
Unlockd Ltd and others v Google Ireland Limited and others (unreported, Roth J, Chancery Division 9 May 2018) – transcribed judgment awaited
Unlockd, an app developer, sought an interim injunction to prevent Google withdrawing its services. Roth J found that the balance of convenience was in the applicants’ favour. Their claim raised a serious issue to be tried and any action by Google to withdraw their platform would severely damage the applicants’ business. An interim injunction was granted.
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