Last 3 months headlines – Page 1168
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Repeat medical errors fuel NHS legal bill
Errors in maternity care that landed the NHS with a £3.1bn legal bill over 10 years are still being repeated, a new report has warned. The study by the NHS Litigation Authority found there were 5,087 maternity claims between 2000 and 2010. It was the most ...
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Council fined for lawyer’s error
A city council has been fined £120,000 after one of its solicitors sent a series of emails relating to a child protection legal case to the wrong address. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found Stoke-on-Trent Council in serious breach of the Data Protection Act after 11 ...
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Detrimental move?
Bradbury v Taylor & Burkinshaw [2012] EWCA Civ 1208 This is a slightly unusual proprietary estoppel case in that it was brought by the alleged promisor, Bill, who sought a declaration that the defendants had no beneficial interest in his house. They counterclaimed for a ...
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Learn from your mistakes
The good ship Legal Ombudsman has been navigating some pretty treacherous waters of late. We have managed to steer past one or two potential rocks – notably the announcement that we will be taking on claims management complaints from next year, and then the publication of the first quarter of ...
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Employment
Pay – Statutory minimum Nambalat v Tayeb and another; Udin v Chamsi-Pasha and others: Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Justice Pill, Lady Justice Black and Mr Justice Bean): 5 October 2012 ...
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Ignoring PACE was not ‘brave’
Is Christopher Halliwell, 48, really likely to ‘walk free’ when he has served the 25-year minimum term he was given for murdering 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, as one newspaper reported on Saturday? Sentencing him to life imprisonment a day earlier, Mrs Justice Cox told him: ‘If you are eventually released on ...
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Bar regulator confirms move into ABSs
The Bar Standards Board has confirmed it will apply to the Legal Services Board (pictured) to become a licensing authority of alternative business structures in the new year, and could approve its first ABS in early 2014. At a board meeting last week, the bar’s regulator ...
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Salford claims centre rates poorly with solicitors
Almost two-thirds of users of the Salford civil claims centre rate the service as poor, according to a survey reflecting continued frustration with the new central facility. The figure is among the findings of a poll of 47 legal firms, 40 of which ...
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Court interpreter mess ‘led to custody’, MPs told
Defendants are being remanded in custody solely because court interpreters have not been sent by the company contracted by the Ministry of Justice to provide them, a parliamentary committee heard this week. Giving evidence to the Justice Committee, the chair of the Law Society’s criminal law ...
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PPI text spammers face £250k fines
Originators of spam text messages soliciting PPI and personal injury claims are in line for £250,000 fines. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will announce this week whether it will issue the penalty – the first for spam texts – against two individuals who it believes are responsible for millions of ...
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Todner legal aid fear
Gary McKinnon’s solicitor has described the future for criminal legal aid firms as ‘very scary’, amid swingeing cuts and payment problems. Karen Todner, who was last week named the Gazette’s Legal Personality of the Year, said: ‘The system is so restrictive in terms of running a business.’ ...
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Litigation funder targets case ‘portfolios’
One of the UK’s biggest litigation funders is in talks with law firms about using alternative business structures to invest in a ‘portfolio’ of their commercial litigation. The move by Harbour Litigation Funding signals what is expected to become a closer relationship between law firms and ...
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Human trafficking victims failed by defence teams, CCRC alleges
Many victims of human trafficking are being failed by defence teams, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) warned this week. All have ignored clear law in numerous prosecutions, it alleges. The commission says there are numerous cases where inadequate ...
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Pro bono - minding the gap
The tough economic climate, coupled with the threat to frontline advice agencies from local authority and legal aid cuts, has dramatically increased demand for free legal help. National Pro Bono Week, which starts on 5 November, will focus attention on the question ‘is something better than nothing?’ as law firms ...
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Aggressive lawyers ‘harm mediation’
Aggression around the mediation table can be counter-productive and damage your client’s chances of success, a leading QC has warned. Bill Wood, vice-chair of the Civil Mediation Council, said he had experienced cases where the two lawyers involved were more angry than the clients. Wood told ...
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Civil rights concern over costs-shifting
Lawyers representing claimants against the police have warned that abuses of state power will go unchallenged under costs reforms coming into force in April. The Police Actions Lawyers Group wants qualified one-way costs-shifting extended from personal injury to cover all civil liberties cases.
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UK contingent in Brazil
The Law Society will tell the Brazilian legal sector today that Britain is the place to turn to for international dispute resolution, as it leads a contingent of UK law firms to São Paulo. President Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, whose visit coincides with the Lord Mayor’s trip to ...