Category: Case law
25 October 2011 by Rachit Buch
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis & Anor v Times Newspapers Ltd & Anor [2011] EWHC 2705 (QB) (24 October 2011) – Read judgment.
Mr Justice Tugendhat has held that, with restrictions, The Times Newspapers Ltd (TNL) should be allowed to use information from leaked documents in its defence to a libel claim brought by the Metropolitan Police Service and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). However, proportionality limited the reach of this judgment to the next stage in the libel claim, after which reassessment may be necessary.
It was held that restrictions in the order made did not interfere with TNL’s right to a fair trial in the libel case nor offend its right to freedom of expression. Decisions on specific documents was dealt with in a closed judgment because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.
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20 October 2011 by Shaheen Rahman
Updated | Bailey & Others v London Borough of Brent Council [2011] EWHC 2572 (Admin) – Read judgment
Every Wednesday my daughter looks forward to the arrival of the mobile library at her nursery. Two by two the children go into the little world of books and emerge holding a new story they have chosen for themselves.
Not for long. Despite the well-documented advantages of exposing children to the joys of reading at an early age – before the attractions of TV, video games and looting shops take hold – library services across the land are being targeted for cuts.
The duty to provide library services for children was one of the key arguments advanced by campaigners in Brent challenging the council’s decision to close 6 of its 12 libraries. Reliance was placed upon section 7 of the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. This requires local authorities to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service.
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17 October 2011 by David Hart KC
Cornwall Waste Forum, St Dennis Branch v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (2011) QBD (Admin, CO/6088/2011), Collins J, 13 October 2011
An interesting case about who is to decide issues of air quality in a planning case about incinerators/energy-from-waste plants – that choice of terminology depends on whether you are objecting to or applying for permission to construct. Because the judgment is extempore, it is very shortly reported at the moment (on Lawtel for those who have access to this subscription service), though some extracts are to be found on the claimants’ website.
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14 October 2011 by Richard Mumford
Child Poverty Action Group v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions [2011] EWHC 2616 (Admin) – Read judgment
On 13 October 2011 Mr Justice Supperstone in the High Court held that changes to rules for calculating housing benefit were lawful and in particular did not breach equality legislation.
Two particular measures were under challenge. The first was the introduction of maximum weekly caps on the amount of local housing allowance (LHA). The second was the reduction of the maximum size in accommodation eligible for housing benefit from five bedrooms to four bedrooms.
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13 October 2011 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of Quila and another) (FC) (Respondents) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant); R (on the application of Bibi and another) (FC) (Respondents) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2011] UKSC 45 – read judgment.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Home Secretary’s refusal to grant visas to non-resident spouses under a certain age breached their right to family life under Article 8 of the Convention. A strong dissent from Lord Brown touches on the raw nerve of judicial competence and the role of Article 8 in policy making.
The Supreme Court press summary sets out the factual details of the two cases. Essentially, the issue was whether the ban on the entry for settlement of foreign spouses or civil partners unless both parties are aged 21 or over, contained in Paragraph 277 of the Immigration Rules, was a lawful way of deterring or preventing forced marriages, or at least those associated with assisting a claim for UK residency and citizenship. The minimum age requirement – recently raised from 18 to 21 – was designed to prevent young women who have UK citizenship or residence permission from being pressurised into sponsoring a fiancée or spouse seeking admission to this country.
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12 October 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
AM v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 2486 – read judgment
The Home Secretary Theresa May was lambasted last week for an inaccurate reference to cats, but the more general view expressed by her and most of the media that the Human Rights Act is routinely getting in the way of national security interests is also arguably misleading.
Ironically, in the same week as the Home Secretary was telling the Conservative Party conference that ‘the Human Rights Act must go’ the High Court emphatically upheld her decision to renew a control order on a suspected terrorist.
There is a handy guide to the control orders regime here, and to “TPIMs”, their proposed successor, here. Essentially, control orders are strict conditions imposed on a terrorist suspect such as a curfew, electronic tagging or regular searches. In this case the suspect’s conditions included a ban on any internet access at his home, a ban on using USB memory sticks to transfer any data from his home to his university, restrictions on his access to the internet at university or when he visited his parents, and a requirement to make a phone call every day to a monitoring company.
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10 October 2011 by David Hart KC
Case C-366/10 The Air Transport Association of America and Others, CJEU, 6 October 2011, Opinion of Advocate-General Kokott
In a recent post on US climate change litigation, I said that, by contrast with the US Courts, there was relatively little such strategic litigation in the UK and the EU.
But that all changes when the US lawyers come over here – exactly the issue in this case. US airlines said to the EU Court that their rights under international aviation law have been infringed by a European Directive on greenhouse gas emissions from airlines. This EU Court Opinion goes right to the heart of how two systems of supra-national law fit together. EU law hits International Law. And, unsurprisingly, an EU lawyer thinks that EU law wins – so far, anyway, before the full EU Court of Justice decides the case.
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6 October 2011 by Guest Contributor
Equality and Human Rights Commission v Prime Minister & Ors [2011] EWHC 2401 (Admin) – Read judgment
A challenge to published guidance for intelligence officers interviewing detainees overseas has been partially successful.
Mr Al Bazzouni and the EHRC argued that the guidance as to what officers should do if they suspect detainees might be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (“CIDT”) was unlawful.
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6 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated |I have been sent the first appeal judgment in the political frenzy which has been termed “Catgate”. I had promised myself not to do any more Catgate posts or use any more cute pictures of kittens, but I have now broken that promise.
Having read the short, 6-page judgment dated 9 October 2008 by Immigration Judge JR Devittie – reproduced here by Full Fact – I will quote from it at length (apologies for any transcribing errors) and say the following.
First, on any reading, the judgment does not support the proposition the Home Secretary made in her speech: “The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.” For similar reasons, it does not support the Daily Mail’s headline from this morning: Truth about Tory catfight: Judge DID rule migrant’s pet was a reason he shouldn’t be deported. Back on to the legal naughty step, Daily Mail.
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2 October 2011 by Rachit Buch
Mahajna v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 2481 (Admin) (30 September 2011). Read judgment.
1 Crown Office Row’s Neil Sheldon appeared for the Secretary of State in this case. He is not the writer of this post.
The High Court has ruled that detention of a Palestinian activist, whilst he was challenging the decision to deport him on public policy grounds, was lawful in principle. However, the failure to explain to Raed Salah Mahajna the reasons for his detention in a language he could understand rendered the first 35 hours of detention unlawful.
The treatment of foreign nationals pending deportation has provoked a good deal of controversy, as reported recently. These cases are primarily ones where deportation is considered to be conducive to the public good because of serious criminal offences committed by the individual. In this case however, no crime was committed, but a history of activism perceived as anti-semitic preaching was considered a threat to security in the UK.
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2 October 2011 by Guest Contributor
Ferdinand v Mgn Ltd (Rev 2) [2011] EWHC 2454 (QB) – Read judgment
In the first “misuse of private information” trial against a newspaper since Max Mosley in 2008, Mr Justice Nicol dismissed a claim brough by England and Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand against the “Sunday Mirror”.
The Judge found that, although the claimant’s Article 8 rights to private and family life were engaged, there was a public interest in correcting a false image promoted by the claimant. It was also held that the article contributed to a debate as to the claimant’s fitness to be a role model in the light of his appointment as England football captain.
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27 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In A.A. v. the United Kingdom, a recent case involving the deportation of a young Nigerian man, the Court faced, once again, the question whether relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases. The Court’s Fourth Section did not give a clear answer to this question. The 24-year-old applicant resided with his mother and did not have children of his own [also see Rosalind English’s post].
In this post, I take a quick look at the Fourth Section’s reasoning on this issue and try to situate it in the wider context of the Court’s deportation case law. One word of caution: this is an attempt to briefly look at one specific question the Court asks to decide whether the deportation has interfered with an applicant’s right to respect for her family life. Do the ties invoked by the applicant constitute family life within the meaning of Article 8 § 1? To be more specific, do relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases?
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22 September 2011 by David Hart KC
Case C‑442/09 Bablok et al v. Freistaat Bayern, Monsanto intervening
The result of this decision by the CJEU is summed up in a pithy summary by EU Business entitled “EU court backs angry honeymaker in GM pollen row.” The underlying question arose when food law met honey law (yes, there is one) met GMO licensing law, It was all about whether adventitious contamination of honey and pollen deriving from GMO maize renders the honey a GMO product.
Paradoxically the beekeeper sought that outcome in what we would call statutory tort proceedings. He sued the State of Bavaria who owned various experimental GM maize plots, for damaging his honey via GM pollen. Monsanto, the real object of the case, said that it didn’t matter really that its GMO pollen was in the pollen, and it didn’t cause damage for which our apiarist could sue. As we shall see, the CJEU decided it did matter – a lot.
Not all of you will know that EU legislators have dedicated a whole Directive to honey; of Council Directive 2001/110/EC. In the lyrical yet precise prose of the Eurocrat: ‘Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant‑sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in honeycombs to ripen and mature.’ : Annex I. Honey consists predominantly of sugars but also contains solid particles derived from honey collection, as Annex II tells us.
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21 September 2011 by Rosalind English
A.A. v. THE UNITED KINGDOM – 8000/08 [2011] ECHR 1345 – Read judgment
The Strasbourg Court has ruled unlawful the deportation of a Nigerian man convicted of rape. Considering the facts of his case afresh, the Court came to the conclusion that the 24 year old student’s right to family life would be violated if he were removed to Nigeria.
The applicant arrived in the United Kingdom in 2000 at the age of 13 join his mother. At the age of 15, he was convicted of rape. After serving less than two years of his four-year sentence he was released on licence in 2004. The Home Office served him with a notice of liability to a deportation order on account of the rape conviction. Although the Immigration Judge of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (“the AIT”) allowed the applicant’s appeal, the Secretary of State’s appeal against this finding ultimately prevailed since it was found that the various factors in respect of his family life and his good conduct in remand did not outweigh the presumption in favour of deportation in accordance with the current version of the Immigration Rules.
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16 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In Colleen Smith v IC and Devon & Cornwall Constabulary (EA/2011/0006), the requester asked for information on the number of school teachers in specified towns who had been investigated, cautioned and charged under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 between January 2005 and November 2007. The Constabulary eventually relied on the personal data at section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (‘FOIA’).
The Commissioner found that, where the answer was “zero”, this was not personal data and should be disclosed; otherwise, the information could be withheld under section 40. The Tribunal has upheld this decision, albeit for different reasons.
This decision is worth noting on a number of grounds.
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