Dispute Resolution

There have been a number of cases in the last few years that have considered the consequences for a claimant when an incorrect court fee has been paid upon the issue of a claim. In the case of Lewis & Others v Ward Hadaway which was referred to in this publication last year, the Court […]

In the case of Fehily v Atkinson which was heard by the High Court at the end of last year, the Court had to consider the issue of whether a person had sufficient mental capacity to enter into a transaction. In that case, Mrs Fehily was seeking to annul a bankruptcy order which had been […]

We have written before about the current problematic relationship between possession claims and a local authority’s duty to rehouse the tenant under threat of eviction. To summarise, local councils have a duty to re-house those considered “involuntarily homeless”, but what constitutes “involuntary” can vary widely from region to region. Some authorities will set the trigger […]

The law of property ownership can be a study in contradictions. On the one hand, almost everyone will rent or buy property in some way during their lives. On the other, the law itself often relies on fairly arcane tenets and distinctions going back hundreds of years. One of the major distinctions the law draws […]

On 24 January 2017 the Supreme Court delivered its eagerly anticipated decision in the case of R (on the application of Miller and another) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 which is likely to be remembered in legal history as one of the key constitutional cases of this century. But why? […]

When is a commercial lease surrendered? The question may appear straightforward but as the tenant found out in the recent case of Padwick Properties Limited v Punj Lloyd Limited the answer is not always as simple as it seems. The landlord granted a 21 year lease of an office block to the tenant company. The […]

Misrepresentation is a complex area of law, but in its simplest form it relates to one party inducing another to enter into an agreement by making false claims. As a familiar example, if you buy a car from a garage that claims the vehicle has been fully checked over and is in perfect working order, […]

The years 2015-16 saw quite a raft of increases to court fees, making the life of would-be claimants considerable more expensive. From April 2015, the cost to issue claims of £10,000 or more was raised to 5% of the claimed sum, dramatically increasing the initial money needed to launch larger claims (and whilst fees for […]

You’ve just bought a house with the view you always wanted and every day starts with the beautiful sweeping vista. Now fast forward a few years and your neighbour decides to plant a few trees. Not any species of tree however, but fast growing, potentially enormous Leylandii that eclipse the once splendid view so dear […]

The European Convention on Human Rights’ principle relevance to tenants’ rights is enshrined in Article 8, the “right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence.” As with all the rights set out in the convention, the primary intent is to govern the relations between a state and its citizens and so the […]

If A enters into a contract on behalf of A and B but A does not have B’s authority, is the contract still valid?  This was the question which the Court of Appeal had to consider in the recent case of Marlbray Limited v Laditi and another. Mr and Mrs Laditi attended a sales fair […]

Recently, two longstanding high street brands, BHS and Austin Reed, have gone into administration. In addition to the 12,000 or so employees whose jobs are at risk there are also hundreds of suppliers who may receive only a fraction, if any, of the value of the goods which they have supplied to those two firms. […]