Category: Case summaries
15 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Principal Reporter (Respondent) v K (Appellant) and others (Scotland) [2010] UKSC 56 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has ruled that Scottish law, which previously did not give unmarried fathers the right to take part in a hearing relating to a child with whom they have established family ties, is incompatible with human rights law.
The statutory provision which defines the categories of people who have a right to take part in the hearings must be read to include anyone who has established family life with the child. The Human Rights Act empowers courts to “read” legislation in such a way as to give effect to the European Convention on Human Rights.
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15 December 2010 by Caroline Cross
PF and EF v UK (Application No. 28326/09) – Read judgment
The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed an application brought against the police in Northern Ireland by a mother and her daughter who argued the police had failed to take sufficient action to protect them from loyalist riots on their route to primary school.
The court held that the police must be afforded a degree of discretion in taking operational decisions, and that in this case the police took all “reasonable steps” to protect the applicants.
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14 December 2010 by Maria Roche
R v Khan [2010] EWCA Crim 2880 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has increased the sentences of two human traffickers from 3 to 4 years and upheld the 3 year sentence of a third trafficker (despite her mental health problems) for systematic and well-planned exploitation of trafficked restaurant workers.
The offenders, Shahnawaz Ali Khan, Raza Ali Khan and their mother Perveen Khan, were family restaurateurs in Harrogate. Over a period of four years they recruited nine men from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to work in the restaurant. All the workers entered the country legally on non-EEA work permits, after the offenders made assurances of good pay and working conditions to both the workers and the Home Office.
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9 December 2010 by Rosalind English
The Child Poverty Action Group (Respondent) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions(Appellant) [2010] UKSC 54 – Read judgment / press release
The Supreme Court has ruled that where benefits are overpaid as a result of a mistaken calculation, the department responsible cannot claim these amounts back via the common law route of restitution; the Secretary of State’s only recourse is via Section 71 of the Social Security Administration Act.
The following summary is taken from the Supreme Court site’s Press Release, with my comment below:
This appeal concerns the question whether, in cases of social security benefit awards mistakenly inflated due to a calculation error, the Secretary of State is entitled to recover sums overpaid under the common law of unjust enrichment or whether section 71 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 (the “1992 Act”) provides the only route to recovery (nb. the Supreme Court press summary wrongly refers to the Social Security Benefits Act 1992).
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7 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
MacKay & BBC Scotland v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 10734/05) – Read judgment / press release
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the failure of the Scottish court system allow the BBC to challenge a court reporting ban was a violation of rights to freedom of expression and information as well as to an effective remedy.
Mr Mackay, a retired journalist, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Scotland, challenged a 15 February 2005 order prohibiting the publication of any report of the trial of two men accused of importing and supplying controlled drugs. The order arose in the midst of an appeal hearing brought by the Crown against a previous judge’s decision to stay the hearing. The BBC faxed the court asking to be heard on the order, but were told they could not be heard until the next day. The order became final.
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6 December 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Sinclair Collis Limited, The Members of National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators (Interested Party) v Secretary of State for Health [2010] EWHC 3112 (Admin) – Read judgment or Rosalind English’s analysis of the decision
The High Court has ruled that the Secretary of State for Health did not breach the human right to peaceful enjoyment of property or European Union law by banning the sale of tobacco products from automatic vending machines.
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1 December 2010 by Richard Mumford
On 30 November 2010 the High Court handed down its written ruling upholding the 7/7 inquests Coroner’s decision that there were to be no ‘closed’ hearings at the inquests. An analysis of the Coroner’s decision can be found here. The High Court had previously given its decision, with an indication that reasons were to follow.
The Divisional Court of the High Court, composed of two colleagues of the Coroner (Dame Heather Hallett) in the Court of Appeal, robustly rejected the Home Secretary’s application for a review of the decision. In short, both judges concurred with Hallett LJ’s decision that the Coroners Rules did not provide a power to hear evidence in sessions from which ‘interested persons’ (including families of the 7/7 victims) could be excluded.
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30 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Schalk and Kopf v. Austria (application no. 30141/04) – Read judgment / press release / press release 2
The European Court of Human Rights has refused permission to appeal in a challenge to the ban on gay marriage in Austria. The effect of the decision is to make the court’s rejection of the same-sex couple’s claim final.
The decision means that the European Court of Human Rights will not force states to allow same-sex couples to marry, for now at least. This has a potential bearing on the UK, where a number of same-sex and heterosexual couples are currently bringing claims against UK laws which permit civil partnerships for same-sex couples but prevents them from marrying.
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26 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
HM (Iraq) v The secretary of state for the home department [2010] EWCA Civ 1322 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has overruled the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s decision to deport a 25-year-old Iraqi citizen who had lived in the UK since he was 12 and had recently been sent to prison for drug dealing, on the basis that it did not think carefully enough about his human rights to private and family life.
The decision – which is unusually concise and easy to follow – highlights the careful balancing exercise which an asylum and immigration tribunal must undertake in order to weigh up whether a person’s human rights to private and family life outweigh the public good of sending them back to their home country. In this case, although HM won his appeal, his case must now be reheard – for a third time – by an asylum tribunal.
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25 November 2010 by Caroline Cross
Application no. 32666/10 by X, Y & Z against the UK, lodged on 8 June 2010 – Read statement of facts
In a potentially landmark case, the European Court has been asked to determine the extent to which a local authority is under a duty prevent a breach of a person’s rights under Articles 3 (against inhuman and degrading treatment) and 8 (home and family life) in a case where two people with learning difficulties were violently harassed and threatened by a group of teenage youths.
The case concerns vulnerable adults who rely on social services. X and Y, who are married, both have learning difficulties. Z is the mother of X, and acted as a carer and advocate for both X and Y. X and Y lived in Hounslow Borough with Y’s two young children. Three local authority departments were involved with X and Y’s family, providing for their housing needs and allocating social workers for both the adults and children. Over a period from August 1999 until November 2000, X and Y were continually harassed and threatened by a group of teenage youths, who used the flat as a general ‘doss house’, dumping stolen goods, having sex and staying overnight.
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25 November 2010 by Rosalind English
MA (Somalia) (Respondent) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 49. Read judgment
Update, 26 November – Rosalind English’s case comment is here
The following report is based on the press summary provided by the Supreme Court.
The issues raised in this appeal were: (1) the correct approach to the relevance of lies told by an asylum seeker in the assessment of real risk of persecution on return to his or her country of origin; and (2) how far it is legitimate for an appeal court to interfere with the assessment of facts made by a specialist tribunal on the grounds of error of law.
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23 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Greens and M.T. v. the United Kingdom (application nos. 60041/08 & 60054/08) – Read judgment / press release (which the case summary below is based on)
The European Court of Human Rights is to give the UK a deadline of six months in order to allow prisoners to vote in elections, or it could face significant consequences.
The warning came by way of the judgment in a new case concerning the continued failure to amend the legislation imposing a blanket ban on voting in national and European elections for convicted prisoners in detention in the United Kingdom. The court, following its own five-year-old decision in Hirst No . 2, found a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections) to the European Convention on Human Rights but no violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention.
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23 November 2010 by Catriona Murdoch
Petsafe Ltd, R (on the application of) v The Welsh Ministers [2010] EWHC 2908 (Admin) (16 November 2010) – Read judgment
The High Court has ruled that a Welsh ban on the use of collars designed to administer electric shocks to cats and dogs does not breach Article 1 of the First Protocol of the ECHR or impinge upon the free movement of goods protected under European Union Law.
The Judicial Review application was brought by two interested parties, Petsafe Ltd and The Electronic Collar Manufacturers Association against the Welsh Ministers who after a lengthy consultation period dating from 2007, brought into force the Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars (Wales)) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/934) (“the 2010 Regulations”) which banned the use of electric collars. The 2010 Regulations were created under the powers conferred to the Welsh Ministers under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (“AWA 2006”). A breach of the 2010 Regulations is an offence punishable with up to 51 weeks imprisonment and/or a fine not exceeding Level 5 (£5,000).
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19 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
RT (Zimbabwe) & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 1285 (18 November 2010) – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that asylum seekers cannot be forced to lie about not holding political beliefs when returning to their home country. The potentially wide-ranging decision extends the protection arising from a recent Supreme Court decision which found that homosexuals could not be sent back to their home country if they would have to lie about their sexuality.
The case concerned four Zimbabwean asylum seekers. In previous asylum cases involving Zimbabwe, it had been assumed that it is legitimate to require applicants, in order to avoid persecution, to demonstrate loyalty to Zanu-PF, itself a persecutory regime. The men in this case did not hold strong political views, but did not support the Zanu-PF either. The question was whether it would breach their human rights to send them back if they would be forced to join the ruling party.
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18 November 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Adakini Ntuli v Howard Donald [2010] EWCA Civ 1276 – Read judgment
Take That’s Howard Donald has failed to maintain an injunction against the press reporting details of his relationship with a former girlfriend. He had originally sought the injunction after receiving a text from the woman saying: “Why shud I continue 2 suffer financially 4 the sake of loyalty when selling my story will sort my life out?”
‘Superinjunctions’ have received a great deal of press coverage recently, not least because they are usually granted in cases involving celebrities’ private lives. They are injunctions, usually in privacy or breach of confidence cases, which prevent not only the publication of certain matters, but even the publication of the existence of legal proceedings. These cases are of particular interest because of the competing ECHR rights in play: Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life, and Article 10, the right to freedom of expression.
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Principal Reporter (Respondent) v K (Appellant) and others (Scotland) [2010] UKSC 56 – Read judgment / press summary
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