16 May 2018 by David Hart KC
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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7 September 2013 by Rosalind English
CM, Re Judicial Review [2013] CSOH 143 – read judgment
The Scottish Court of Session has ruled that the prohibition of smoking and possession of tobacco products by patients at a mental hospital was unlawful. Whilst being careful to emphasise that this ruling did not spell out a specific right to smoke, the Court considered that the ban infringed the patients’ right to respect for home under Article 8.
The petitioner, a patient in a high security psychiatric hospital, sought judicial review of the policy adopted by the State Hospitals Board to ban smoking not just inside the hospital but also in the hospital grounds. He claimed that the ban amounted to a breach of his right to respect for private life and home under Article 8, both as a stand‑alone claim and in combination with Article 14 (enjoyment of Convention rights without discrimination). He also argued that the ban constituted an unlawful and discriminatory infringement of his right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions under Article 1 Protocol 1.
The petitioner further based his position on compassionate grounds, pointing out that there are few diversions available in the State Hospital; that he derived pleasure from smoking; and that as an individual with relatively few liberties the removal of his ability to smoke had had a disproportionately large impact on him.
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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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