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…
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…
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…
When the terms of a house building contract exclude any liability for losses incurred by the client on account of defective works, the client has no redress under a general duty of care. This was the decision of the…
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…
A workplace death in 2008 has led to the first conviction of a company under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. Alexander Wright, who was 27 at the time of his death, was investigating soil conditions in…
A recent case concerning the misuse of database information illustrates the wisdom of preparing comprehensive evidence in support of one’s arguments. Databases can be valuable assets and are often assembled and maintained at great cost. In the case in…
Everyone makes mistakes: even the courts recognise this. Recently, a structural steel erection and roof cladding firm found itself in court when a tender it had submitted for work contained an error. The tender was in two parts, worth…
Bribery is coming under increasing attention following the passing of the Bribery Act 2010, under which bribery is a criminal act. Whilst implementation of the Act, which was passed under the previous administration, has been delayed so that the…
A developer who relied on the advice of a firm of quantity surveyors (QS) without fully formalising their terms of engagement in the form of a contract found recently that the court was unwilling to imply into the terms…