Dispute Resolution

It’s a familiar image: the family all set for a holiday, up at the crack of dawn and speeding on down to the airport, passports in hand, only to come to a screeching halt because the plane – for which you arrived an hour or two early – is delayed for an hour, or four […]

A UK company has been forced to give up seven domain names using the words “Star Wars”, following action by Lucasfilm which is owned by media giant, Disney. Abscissa.com Limited, a fancy dress retailer from Berkshire, registered two of the addresses –starwars.co.uk and star-wars.co.uk – in 2003 after Lucasfilm, the production company behind the Star […]

Back in 2011, the country’s newspapers were awash with reports of privacy ‘super-injunctions’. The furore reached its peak with the case of Ryan Giggs who successfully obtained and maintained an injunction preventing the publication of a story about his affair with Imogen Thomas when his identity was easily available on social media and had been […]

The saga of the mis-selling by the banks of Interest Rate Hedging Products (IRHP), commonly known as Interest Rate Swaps, rumbles on. It was reported in the Sunday Times over the weekend that The Coin Group Limited, an operator of care homes in Buckinghamshire, had settled its High Court claim against Lloyds Bank Plc over […]

From 1 October 2015, the new Consumer Rights Act 2015 replaces a number of existing laws relating to the supply of goods, services and digital content for contracts made from that date. Here are three key changes: (1) A more straightforward remedy to a consumer who has been given misleading information in the sale of […]

From 1 October 2015, the new Consumer Rights Act 2015 replaces a number of existing laws; consolidating eight pieces of separate legislation into a single piece of new legislation. The Act will change the rules relating to the supply of goods, services and digital content for contracts made from that date. In brief the new […]

Mortgage fraud is big business, whether for straight profit, by obtaining finance on a property under false pretences, or as a method of laundering money gained by criminal means. What should a property owner look out for? Here are a couple of studies from cases Blacks has dealt with in the recent past: Case study […]

Following on from the introduction of Tenancy Deposits Schemes on 6 April 2007, the Housing Act 2004 has now been amended further to expand and give more protection to Tenants and deposits paid under Assured Shorthold Tenancies. Previously, a landlord was required to protect a deposit under a tenancy deposit scheme and had to do so […]

In the case of Sierra Fishing & Ors v Ali Zbeeb & Ors the High Court has taken the unusual step of removing an arbitrator under section 24 Arbitration Act 1996. Commercial arbitration is a means of resolving business disputes between two or more parties outside a formal court system. After reviewing all of the […]

In a matter of great public interest the Court of Appeal has recently decided that private parking charges of at least £85 are not unlawful. The case of ParkingEye –v- Beavis was appealed from a first instance hearing last year and is now the current precedent in respect of whether a parking charge can be […]

The High Court has struck out the recent libel case of Liberty Fashion Wears Ltd –v- Primark Stores Ltd & others as an abuse of process. The Claimant sought damages in respect of the Defendant’s press release which raised concerns over the Bangladeshi-based Claimant’s building safety record. Defamation claims can be difficult to prove as […]

A group of British consumers have won the right to sue Google in the UK over the mega-corporation’s alleged misuse of privacy settings. In a landmark outcome Google have lost their appeal to the Court of Appeal in which they argued that the consumers’ case should be thrown out because, amongst other things, they had […]