Category: Case law
1 February 2011 by Rosalind English
R on the application of Hope and Glory Public House v City of Westminster Magistrates Court [2011] EWCA Civ 31 Read judgement
It was not unfair in terms of Article 6 to require of a party aggrieved by a licensing decision to bear the responsibility of persuading the court hearing the appeal that the original decision was wrong.
This appeal raises a question about how a magistrates’ court hearing an appeal from a decision of a licensing authority under the Licensing Act 2003 (“the Act”) should approach the decision.
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31 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Shergill v Purewal & Anor [2010] EWHC 3610 (QB) (15 December 2010) – Read judgment
In the commotion surrounding the Christian hotel gay discrimination case, it is easy to forget that there is a long-standing principle that English courts will not decide matters of religious doctrine. This principle has been in play in a run of recent cases involving an Indian holy man and libel claims against journalists.
The most recent case was brought by
Dajid Singh Shergill, a UK-based Sikh activist suing the Panjab Times in relation to 3 articles published in the summer 2008, relating to His Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj (Jeet Singh), an Indian based preacher. The articles claimed, amongst other things, that Jeet Singh had “
abandoned Sikh Principles“, that he and his supporters were a “
sham“, that Shergill had “
sought to instigate serious riots and create an atmosphere of terror” by proclaiming that Baba Jeet Singh had won a court case in India and was seeking to misappropriate local Sikh temples.
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28 January 2011 by Isabel McArdle
X v Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau [2011] EWCA Civ 28 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that disabled people are not protected by domestic or European legislation against discrimination when they undertake voluntary work.
In this decision the specific question was whether volunteers at Citizens Advice Bureaus are protected from disability discrimination. X, the anonymised claimant, argued that CAB had terminated her role as a volunteer adviser because she had a disability. She claimed that:
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26 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Yemshaw (Appellant) v London Borough of Hounslow (Respondent) [2011] UKSC 3 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that “domestic violence” in section 177(1) of the Housing Act 1996 includes physical violence, threatening or intimidating behaviour and any other form of abuse which, directly or indirectly, may give rise to the risk of harm.
The effect of the decision is that anyone threatened with domestic violence, within the Supreme Court’s wider meaning, will not be expected to remain in local authority housing with their abuser. Although the judgement, given by Baroness Hale, did not mention human rights, it clearly impacts on article 8 rights to family life, and alongside the recent decision in Pinnock, could greatly increase the number of people to which local authorities are obliged to provide housing.
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24 January 2011 by Catriona Murdoch
Hall & Anor v Bull & Anor [2011] EW Misc 2 (CC) (04 January 2011) – Read judgment
Judge Andrew Rutherford in the Bristol County Court has held that the devout Christian couple who ran their Cornish hotel according to their Christian principles directly discriminate against a homosexual couple in a civil partnership, when they refused accommodation to them on the basis that they only let double rooms to married couples.
The couple had planned for a short break in Cornwall and, after some internet research, chose the Chymorvah Private Hotel. They booked two nights over the telephone and arrived a few days later. They were met by the owner of the hotel and told in the public reception area in front of at least one other guest, the hotels policy with regard to double rooms. The online booking form stated
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23 January 2011 by Guest Contributor
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights decided in the case of Haas v. Switzerland (judgment in French only) that the right to private life is not violated when a state refuses to help a person who wishes to commit suicide by enabling that person to obtain a lethal substance.
The applicant in the case, Ernst Haas, had for two decades been suffering from a serious bipolar affective disorder (more commonly known as manic depression). During that time he attempted to commit suicide twice. Later, he tried to obtain a medical prescription for a small amount of sodium pentobarbital, which would have allowed him to end his life without ain or suffering. Not a single psychiatrist, of the around 170 (sic!) he approached, was willing to give him such a prescription. This would have been necessary, under Swiss law, which allowed for assisted suicide if it was not done for selfish motives (in the opposite case, the person assisting could be prosecuted under the criminal code).
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21 January 2011 by Guest Contributor
Over the past month, the Court of Human Rights has handed down judgment in six Article 10 cases. We have already posted about the most recent, MGN v United Kingdom. Of the other five, two involved civil defamation claims in domestic cases. In both civil defamation cases it was held that the State had infringed the right to freedom of expression but there was no finding of violation in any of the other cases. The reasoning is not straightforward in any of these cases and there are continuing doubts about the quality of the Court’s Article 10 case law.
The only “media case” amongh the five was Novaya Gazeta V Voronezhe v. Russia([2010] ECHR 2104) in which a unanimous First Section found a violation of Article 10 as a result of a domestic defamation award of RUB 25,000 (£525) and an order for the publication of an apology. The applicant newspaper had published an article which concerned abuses and irregularities allegedly committed by the mayor of Novovoronezh and other municipal officials. It also made references to services supplied by a local businessman. The article relied on and quoted from a town administration audit report. The domestic court allowed the plaintiffs’ action, holding in particular that the article implied the embezzlement of funds by the mayor and the businessman, of which the newspaper had failed to adduce any proof. It pointed out that no criminal proceedings against the plaintiffs in connection with the audit of some of the financial matters in question had been opened and that the article thus lacked a factual basis.
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21 January 2011 by Matthew Flinn
R (on the application of Guardian News and Media Limited) v City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2010] EWHC 3376 – Read judgment
The Guardian newspaper has failed to convince the High Court that it should be able to see key documents in the trial of three men threatened with extradition to the United States on charges of corruption and bribery. The case highlights the finely balanced right to freedom of information.
Since the European Convention of Human Rights came into force in 1953, the scope of the rights contained within it has grown along with the jurisprudence it has given rise to. As times have changed, the Article 8 right to respect for private life has, for example, grown to encompass increased rights for both pre- and post-operative transsexuals. More recently, the Article 10 right to freedom of expression has also been said by the European Court of Human Rights to include a right to access certain kinds of information. The scope of human rights, like many legal definitions, appear to have a metastatic tendency. However, in a recent case involving Art 10 the High Court drew a line in the sand, at least as regards the limited sphere of access to court documents in extradition cases.
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21 January 2011 by Rosalind English
Morge (FC) (Appellant) v Hampshire County Council (Respondent) on appeal from [2010] EWCA Civ 608- Read judgment
We cannot drive a coach-and-horses through natural habitats without a bit of soul-searching, says the Supreme Court .
The UK has conservation obligations under EU law to avoid the deterioration of natural habitats and this goes beyond holding back only those developments that threaten significant disturbance to species. Detailed consideration must be given to the specific risks to the species in question. But this consideration can be left to the quangos; planning committees are not obliged to make their own enquiries.
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20 January 2011 by Maria Roche
TTM (By his Litigation Friend TM) v London Borough of Hackney, East London NHS Foundation Trust; Secretary of State for Health – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the local authority, but not the detaining hospital, was liable to pay compensation to a person who had been unlawfully detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983. The case provides important guidance on the liability of mental health and medical professionals in the difficult area of detaining patients, as well as the ability to recover damages where a claimant is unlawfully detained.
The Court held that the patient’s detention had been unlawful from the start when the approved mental health professional [‘AMHP’] erred in whether the patient’s relative objected to admission. The local authority responsible for the AMHP could not rely on the Section 139(1)of the Mental Health Act 1983 [‘the Act’] statutory protection from civil liability, which had to be read down by virtue of Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to give effect to the patient’s right to liberty under Article 5 of the ECHR.
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19 January 2011 by Matthew Flinn
Secretary of State for Justice v RB [2010] UKUT 454 – Read judgment
In a fascinating recent case, the Upper Tribunal has departed from a line of court authority to decide that where a patient has been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, conditionally discharging that patient from hospital subject to conditions which might themselves amount to a form of detention is compatible with Article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights, the right to liberty .
RB, who was aged 75, had been detained under the Mental Health Act on 30 June 1999 following a conviction for indecent assault on a boy aged under 16. He suffered from a persistent delusional disorder, which rendered him a “strongly misogynistic”, lifelong paedophile.
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19 January 2011 by Rosalind English
MGN Limited v The United Kingdom – (Application no. 39401/04) Read judgment
The details of the Court’s ruling are set out in our previous post on this case. The following analysis focusses on the success of the newspapers’ core complaint concerning the recoverability against it of 100% success fees.
This judgment has serious practical implications not just for publication cases but for any civil case not covered by legal aid, and although the ruling is only binding on the government, not on the courts, the potential for its immediate domestic impact cannot be ignored. Defendants challenging costs orders will have this judgment at the head of their arsenal from today; the practical resonances of the case are imminent.
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18 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
MGN Limited v The United Kingdom – (Application no. 39401/04) Read judgment / press release / our analysis
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK’s controversial no-win-no-fee costs system violated the Daily Mirror’s freedom of expression rights after it was forced to pay model Naomi Campbell’s legal fees after a 2004 House of Lords judgment.
The European Court attacked the present costs system, and in particular success fees, using the findings of the recent review by Lord Justice Jackson, which the government intends to mostly implement. It held that the costs system often amounted to the “blackmail” of defendants, and has had an unjustified chilling effect on the press.
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18 January 2011 by Rosalind English
IFAW Internationaler Tierschutz-Fonds gGmbH; read judgment
EU law is replete with the soaring rhetoric of rights and transparency. Indeed the very first Article of the Treaty on European Union states that ‘decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen’ . But not, it appears, when the decision concerns the balance between short-term economic interests and those of the environment – or, in the Commission’s own words, the “Community’s natural heritage”.
Key facts and figures relating to central policy remain firmly under lock and key in the EU, as NGOs find when they try to get the Commission to enforce the various Directives against national governments and the EU institutions themselves.
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17 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Immigration and deportation decisions are regularly used to attack the Human Rights Act, and are raised as examples of why it must be amended or replaced. But a recent deportation case shows that such decisions are often poorly reported and articles ignore crucial details.
Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph reported on the case of a man who killed a Gurkha soldier’s son and cannot be deported because of human rights law. According to David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent, the controversial decision will “intensify pressure” on the prime minister “who has so far failed to deliver a Conservative promise to rip up the Human Rights Act.”
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R on the application of Hope and Glory Public House v City of Westminster Magistrates Court [2011] EWCA Civ 31 Read judgement
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