Legal News

Pleasing employers, letting down victims?

Posted on July 15, 2008
Read more of Frances Gibb's exclusive online columns

Lord Chief Justice defends judiciary against 'ill-informed attacks'

Posted on July 15, 2008
Britain’s most senior judge last night hit back at “ill-informed attacks” on judges, particularly over granting bail.

Paid maternity leave does us no favours either, say fathers

Posted on July 14, 2008
A benefit that enriches family life or a burden that sabotages women’s careers? Nicola Brewer’s claim that the extension of maternity leave and parental rights has hampered women’s employment chances has drawn praise and criticism in equal measure.

In court today: Gurkha veterans seek to challenge the Government

Posted on July 14, 2008
High Court

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Max Mosley ‘begged for more’ after being hit 88 times

Posted on July 14, 2008
Max Mosley, the motor racing chief, begged a dominatrix who had spanked him at an alleged Nazi orgy for more brutal punishment at their next encounter, the High Court was told.

Max Mosley S&M case: ruling next week

Posted on July 14, 2008
The head of world motorsport, Max Mosley, will have to wait a week to find out whether he has won his groundbreaking privacy case against the News of the World over an S&M session with five women in a basement flat in Chelsea.

'Forced retirement breached solicitor's fundamental rights'

Posted on July 14, 2008
A solicitor fighting a test appeal after he was forced to retire at 65 has a “fundamental” right not to be discriminated against because of his age, an employment tribunal heard today.

Magdalene Bayim-Adomako: 'There are not many black lawyers in the City'

Posted on July 14, 2008
There are not many black lawyers in the City. Still, I’ve never felt disadvantaged in any sense. Being from a middle class background, it felt normal to go off to study law and become a solicitor. However, in general terms, I can see that access to the profession is disproportionately difficult for ethnic minorities, not least because of firms’ policies of recruiting only from certain select universities...

Maternity leave: 'I was a grateful beneficiary, but the pendulum has swung'

Posted on July 14, 2008
"You'll be breeding like rabbits now I suppose,” remarked the acerbic deputy editor of the newspaper where I worked in 1975, when the first maternity leave legislation came in. It was long fought for and rightly welcomed: before that it was accepted as normal to be given the sack when you were pregnant...

Solicitor fights 'ageist' law firm which forced him to retire at 65 years old

Posted on July 13, 2008
A solicitor who was forced by his law firm to retire at 65 will lodge a test appeal today, claiming that he was the victim of age discrimination.

In court today: Closing speeches are expected in Max Mosley case

Posted on July 13, 2008
High Court

Woman blew £450,000 from friend at casino

Posted on July 13, 2008
Bristol

How mother’s stand after job humiliation won her £120,000

Posted on July 13, 2008
Sarah Vince-Cain describes herself as a child of the Eighties, brought up in the age of “hard work, power suits and Margaret Thatcher”, and felt guilty about taking time off to start a family.

Equality laws ‘are now holding women back’

Posted on July 13, 2008
The radical extension of maternity leave and parents’ rights is sabotaging women’s careers, according to the head of the new equalities watchdog.

Landowners and hunt join forces in legal battle to ban saboteurs

Posted on July 13, 2008
A group of 84 landowners is backing a hunt’s attempt to ban saboteurs from almost every piece of open land and countryside in West Sussex.

Are top lawyers worth their huge fees?

Posted on July 12, 2008
Greedy, grasping, duplicitous, self-serving, silver-tongued, slimy, pompous? and that’s being diplomatic. It has become fashionable to knock lawyers, especially successful ones. Few professional groups are as maligned as solicitors and their more voluble (and grandiose) bedfellows, the barristers.

Max Mosley case: bend over, free speech, this is going to hurt

Posted on July 12, 2008
In a chamber of the Royal Courts of Justice last week sat Max Mosley, grandee of motor racing and fan of sadomaso-chism. I sat close enough to see the prickle of hair at his shirt collar. His features were immobile, back poker straight, his dress fastidious – not unlike his father Oswald, perhaps...

Dominatrix quits Max Mosley case, dealing blow to tabloid's Nazi claim against F1 boss

Posted on July 11, 2008
The News of the World was forced to drop its allegation that Max Mosley requested a Nazi orgy after a dominatrix was too upset to give evidence yesterday.

Family courts chief defends privacy

Posted on July 11, 2008
Britain’s most senior family judge has mounted a vigorous defence of the “closed” family justice system, saying that privacy is what the vast majority of parents and children in care cases want.

Drug case failure may be last straw for Serious Fraud Office

Posted on July 11, 2008
The future of the Serious Fraud Office is in doubt after the collapse yesterday of a £25 million case against drug companies accused of price fixing against the NHS.

Tasters sue Cadbury over reaction to additives

Posted on July 11, 2008
Cadbury's US business has been hit by an unusual lawsuit from three of the company's taste testers who claim to have been seriously injured trying a new product.

Analysis: pills that soothe NHS finances

Posted on July 11, 2008
Generic medicines are drugs that are no longer protected by patent, so they can be copied by other manufacturers at a lower cost. This makes them attractive to the NHS because they are generally less expensive than branded products, saving money while retaining the active ingredients and efficacy of successful drugs.

Abortion reform provokes new battle with bishops

Posted on July 11, 2008
Plans to relax strict abortion and euthanasia laws and a proposed ban on Catholic symbols at state events have put Spain’s Socialist Government on course for a showdown with the Roman Catholic Church.

ICC's decision was historical revisionism of the worst kind

Posted on July 11, 2008
At its meeting last week, the International Cricket Council's executive board decided that the result of the August 2006 Oval Test match between England and Pakistan should be altered from an England win to a draw. It had no power to do so under the Laws of Cricket and the decision is a nullity...

Analysis: Serious Fraud Office reeling from another humiliating blow

Posted on July 11, 2008
The Serious Fraud Office will be reeling from the humiliating blow inflicted on it today when a judge threw out its price-fixing prosecution of five drugs companies.

SFO blow as Goldshield case collapses

Posted on July 11, 2008
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) suffered a major blow today after a judge threw out a price-fixing case against five drug companies, leaving an eight-year investigation that cost an estimated £25 million in tatters.

Small record labels lose legal bid to derail SonyBMG merger

Posted on July 10, 2008
Independent music labels fighting to break-up the merger that created industry giant SonyBMG suffered a blow this morning when Europe’s highest court reversed an earlier ruling criticising the deal.

Iraq £3m deal ends a fight for justice. Now other battles can begin . . .

Posted on July 10, 2008
The victims

You can’t trust a witness’s memory, experts tell courts

Posted on July 10, 2008
The memories of witnesses are flawed, marred by gaps or inventions and should not be relied upon in court cases, researchers say. Memories are a record of people’s experiences of events – not a record of those events themselves, their report concludes...

Courts do not rely on a person’s memory alone

Posted on July 10, 2008
How much should the courts rely on a person’s memory? Today’s report by the British Psychological Society has put memory to the test – and found it wanting. Research that illuminates the deficiencies of memory is clearly welcome: courts and those who work in them can only benefit from knowing how memory is fallible and varies according to the age of the witness, the kind of event recalled, how long ago it took place and any questioning by police or lawyers to elicit recall...

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