General Private Client

A North Somerset man has received a six-figure sum in compensation after a mistake during an operation on his heart led to him having to have a pacemaker fitted. Steve Edwards, 51, an NHS manager from Weston-super-Mare, was undergoing treatment for an...

The scheme set up by the Government to assess the value of Northern Rock shares, for the purposes of deciding whether or not compensation was due to shareholders, concluded that without government support the shares would be valueless. A group of...

Most people probably do not realise that a highway authority’s responsibility for keeping the roads safe to use is very limited. In practical terms, so many things can happen to a road that it would be unreasonable for the authority to be responsible...

It is well known that in the UK, the loser in a court case pays the legal costs of the winner. It is often assumed that if, say, your legal costs are £5,000 and you win your case, you will get the £5,000 reimbursed. However, this is normally not...

A landowner’s duty of care with regard to land used by members of the public was the subject of a recent case in the High Court . The limits of legal responsibility in such circumstances are established generally by the law of tort (civil injury to...

The High Court has upheld a challenge by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to various terms found in some gym membership contracts – most notably lengthy minimum membership periods – ruling that such terms are unfair and therefore unenforceable....

As part of the Government’s bid to tackle the growth of a ‘compensation culture’, the Ministry of Justice has announced that the payment of referral fees in personal injury cases is to be banned. At present, referral fees are commonly paid...

Damage by animals is not common, despite the lurid headlines one sees in the popular press. However, if your animal does cause damage or injury to someone else, what is the extent of your liability? As well as a remedy in tort (the general law of damages),...

With all the recent publicity surrounding the proposed changes to the ‘no win, no fee’ regime, another set of proposals, which may well be of greater importance to many people, has slipped under the radar of the popular press. A new...

A ‘McKenzie Friend’, named after the case which established the legal principles in 1970, is a person who assists another person in legal proceedings in open court when the person who is party to the proceedings requires support – for...

Not many prosecutions are brought under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 , which are designed to protect consumers from the activities of unscrupulous traders. Recently, however, several companies were taken to court by the...

Insurance giant AXA has sent out a message to accident cheats that it will resist claims which it believes to be fraudulent. In a recent case , the insurer took court action over a relatively small claim of £1,500. Alleging that the claim had been...

In a groundbreaking decision , the Supreme Court has ruled that an expert witness who is negligent in respect of their work can be sued. Until the decision, the rule was that experts were immune from being sued for negligence in relation to evidence given...

Debtor Patrick Brophy must pay his credit card bill, following the failure of his bid to overturn a High Court decision dismissing his appeal against a 2009 judgment in the Willesden County Court. Mr Brophy took his case to the Court of Appeal , alleging...

A drug smuggler was arrested at Heathrow Airport and discovered on X-ray to have ingested 116 bags of cocaine containing approximately a kilogramme of the Class A drug. The man was immediately remanded in custody by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) staff. He...

A balancing act is always necessary when a case heard by the courts is of interest to the public but where revealing the facts and identifying the parties involved would infringe their right to privacy. Normally, the balance is achieved by revealing either...

The banks have recently lost a High Court challenge to new rules issued by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) regarding the approach to compensating those who have been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). PPI was commonly sold alongside...

One of the more frequent problems faced by charity trustees is that of balancing the need for charity investments to produce financial benefits with the desire for them to also produce social benefits. Fortunately, the Charity Commission has now updated its...

In a landmark decision ( Jones v Kaney ), the Supreme Court has overturned the long-established principle that an expert witness is immune from being sued over evidence given in court, except in respect of defamation suits. The decision was reached in...

Many websites only allow full access to features if ‘cookies’ are enabled on your web browser. A cookie is a small text file placed on your computer which allows the site visited to identify you (strictly, the computer user) on future visits to...

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has warned debt management firms to stop using unsolicited and misleading cold-calling practices to generate client leads. As part of its crackdown on illegal cold-calling within the debt management industry, the OFT has...

The Government is planning to change the current ‘no win, no fee’ system, in which a lawyer taking a no win no fee case charges a success fee met, in effect by the losing party, to an American style system in which the damages are split between...

A recent case has confirmed the position that if a complainant accepts recompense ordered by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), further recompense will not be available by way of court proceedings. Although the FOS is free, the Ombudsman can only award...

A recent case illustrates that it is not necessarily possible to make a claim against a supplier of goods just because they failed to warn the purchaser about a potential issue. The case involved a manufacturer of fire extinguishers, from whom a...

The Court of Appeal recently ruled that a debtor should not be threatened with prison for contempt of court merely to speed up a debt collection process. The case concerned Emeka Okonkwo, a tenant of Broomleigh Housing Association in Croydon, Surrey....