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Frances Gibb and Jonathan Ames bring this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip. Tweet us @TimesLaw with your views. Today - First motor neurone disease case before tribunal
- Drone laws ‘need urgent clarity’
- Solicitor ‘scammed’ half a million pounds in client ‘loans’
- Call for crackdown on corporate data snooping
- Tax fraud trial for City lawyer in September 2017
- Four-fifths of hate-crime cases result in conviction
- Comment: Brexit and the new legal order
- Blue Bag Diary: Paddy Mayhew and the bells
- Dealmakers: Towering over Brexit
Plus: What about justice …? Theresa May spent her first night in Downing Street stirring the Westminster pot – can any pundit really claim to have seen Boris Johnson bagging the foreign secretary portfolio? – but tantalisingly, she has held back on justice. Michael Gove to stay on, in another surprise move? That seems unlikely, considering past enmities. Chris Grayling to return? Again, unlikely. Now that Amber Rudd – perhaps best known as the “aristocracy co-ordinator” on the film Four Weddings and a Funeral – succeeds May at the Home Office, Grayling is tipped to go to work and pensions. Therefore Dominic Grieve, QC, really does remain the frontrunner to be the next lord chancellor, unless The Brief has just jinxed it for him. The former attorney-general is thought to fancy the job; May is thought to like the idea of returning the portfolio to a lawyer after two laymen have been in post, and he was a strong “remainer” in the EU referendum, who would provide balance to the heavy “leave” flavour of the top jobs announced so far. And lawyers view Grieve as intellectual, sincere and likeable. |
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First motor neurone disease case before employment tribunal
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A hedge fund manager has lodged a claim for millions of pounds after his employers sacked him days after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind. Michael Johnson, 56 (pictured), was earning £640,000-a-year working in the London office of Fortress Investment Group before he was told things were “not working out” and he was dismissed last July. Johnson, a former British Army officer who is now confined to a wheelchair, says he was finding it “difficult to walk and even to stand” in the period before his diagnosis and dismissal, and claims that he was sacked because of his illness. Fortress Investment, a large US-based finance business, denies having any knowledge of Johnson’s serious medical issues before he was sacked, and maintains that no one at work noticed anything beyond a “slight limp”, which they put down to a minor sports injury. Johnson is asking three judges at the Central London Employment Tribunal to find Fortress guilty of disability discrimination over his dismissal, which could open the way for him to be awarded several million pounds in compensation for lost earnings. Mishcon de Reya, the London law firm acting for Johnson, said yesterday that the case was the first to come before an employment tribunal involving motor neurone disease. Dan Stilitz, QC, from 11KBW in the Temple, representing Fortress, told the tribunal that Johnson’s colleagues and superiors had no idea that he was suffering from motor neurone disease or any other serious problem prior to his dismissal, and that he was dismissed purely because of his performance. |
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Drone laws ‘need urgent clarity’
Drones are taking businesses by surprise, with less than half of top executives aware of legislation affecting their rising use, a law firm said yesterday as it called for rules to be clarified. More than half of British business leaders surveyed said that despite the growing prevalence they lack knowledge about the rules and regulations governing drones. Executives were particularly concerned about their lack of awareness of regulations covering drones and security, privacy, aerial trespassing and personal responsibility. Charles Russell Speechlys, the London law firm that commissioned pollsters YouGov to conduct the survey, called for “greater clarity and education surrounding drone law, to help businesses realise the benefits of the technology, without exposing themselves to risk”. Robert Bond, a partner at the firm, said: “There is currently no clear legal framework to help [businesses]. While issues such as aviation are well reported, few are aware, for example, that using drones can violate the privacy rights of individuals under current data protection law.” Bond called on ministers to “do more to clarify the law on drones as their use becomes more ubiquitous by both consumers and businesses”.
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Solicitor ‘scammed’ half a million pounds in client ‘loans’
A lawyer who secured millions in compensation for clients injured in medical accidents improperly deducted £530,000 in ‘loans’ from his legally-aided clients to bankroll his firm, a tribunal heard. Marcus Nickson, 63, was a partner at KJ Commons & Co, a law firm in Cumbria that is now closed. He was one of the foremost specialist clinical negligence and catastrophic injury solicitors in the UK. An investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority uncovered a shortage of about £537,000 from cases Nickson had conducted between October 2010 and December 2012. The SRA also noticed a number of irregular payments from trust funds over which he was a trustee. It is alleged before a hearing at the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal that Nickson obtained unsecured and indefinite “loans” through deductions from his clients’ damages before they could be recovered in the usual way. The solicitor is formally accused of failing to act with integrity, acting in such a way as to diminish the public’s confidence in the legal profession, failing to comply with a court order and failing to provide a good standard of service to his client. He worked on several high-profile Cumbrian cases, including a £3 million settlement for a young boy left with catastrophic brain damage after staff at the West Cumberland Hospital failed to spot he was being starved of oxygen. Nickson also acted in the case of a man from Bigrigg who was left with kidney failure after eating a contaminated burger on a luxury Egyptian holiday. He won £750,000 compensation. The tribunal continues.
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Call for crackdown on corporate data snooping
Governments in Europe and America should crack down on businesses using “highly intrusive online snooping techniques”, a lawyer said as the EU and US finally cut a deal on data transfer. The two sides signed an agreement earlier in the week known as the “privacy shield”, which replaced an earlier “safe harbour” accord. The deal was needed after the EU’s Court of Justice ruled that the safe harbour provisions breached Europe’s data protection laws because of concerns over how the information was used in America. Lawyers have spent the best part of ten months hammering out the privacy shield replacement deal to cover data transfers. But “government data access is not an issue unique to the US”, said Kirsten Whitfield, a partner at Gowling WLG, an Anglo-Canadian law firm. “Taking privacy shield concerns to the ultimate logical conclusion could prevent data transfers to a great many countries. “Surely efforts would be better spent focusing on often highly intrusive online snooping techniques used by rogue businesses that flagrantly ignore data protection rules.” Whitfield maintained that many countries have laws covering transparency, fair use and security, but even in Europe “those laws are flouted on a daily basis”. “Remaining focused on the correct approach to data management and protection is important,” said Whitfield. “However, it should not eradicate the need to think logically about the issue and align efforts to unearth rogue practices that are genuinely intrusive and cause for alarm."
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Four-fifths of hate-crime cases result in conviction
Prosecutions of hate crimes have increased by nearly 10 per cent in England and Wales over the past two years, figures published yesterday show.
Racially and religiously aggravated hate crime formed the bulk of prosecutions. The Crown Prosecution Service said that in 2015-16 it brought slightly more than 13,000 cases, with the conviction rate increasing to 83.8 per cent compared with 83.5 per cent the previous year. Prosecutions of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes also increased, from 1,277 in 2014-15 to 1,439 in 2015-16. The conviction rate rose over that period from 81.2 per cent to 83. And, as reported yesterday, the number of convictions for disability hate crime increased from 503 in 2014-15 to 707 last year. Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, said the CPS report showed “that more of these incidents are being recognised as hate crimes, so they are reported, investigated and prosecuted as such. It is important that this trend continues and no one should simply think that this abuse – on or offline – will be dismissed or ignored”. She pointed to figures showing that more than four in five prosecuted hate crimes resulted in a conviction, with about 73 per cent involving guilty pleas. “This means that more defendants are pleading guilty due to the strength of the evidence and prosecution case”, said Saunders, “so victims do not have to go through the process of a trial.”
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Tax fraud trial for City lawyer in September 2017
A City of London solicitor who was a partner at a leading US firm will face a jury over tax fraud allegations next September, prosecutors confirmed yesterday. Matthew Cahill, a former finance specialist at the Square Mile office of Sidley Austin, is charged with defrauding Customs and Revenue in a case involving a film investment business called Zeus Partners and a £1.1 billion tax evasion scheme (see The Brief, April 11, 2016) The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that a case management hearing was scheduled for this November, but the full trial is more than a year away. Cahill joined the London office of the Chicago-headquartered law firm four years ago from Clifford Chance, the English “magic circle” practice. According to a report in The Lawyer magazine at the time, Cahill had been based at CC’s Abu Dhabi office after having done a previous stint for the firm in Tokyo.
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In Brief
In today’s Times Law Elsewhere ... - Third-party funding shake up -- Burford Capital and Navigant directors quit to launch rival fund – The Lawyer
- Lawyer matching service Spoke receives 2,400 applications ahead of launch – Legal Business
- Polish solicitor launches crowdfunding bid to ‘give Europeans a voice’ in Brexit – Legal Cheek
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Barristers get to grips with Brexit
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Will Brexit be good or bad for the Bar? Chantal-Aimée Doerries, QC, the half-German, half-American chairwoman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, is certainly doing her best to put a gloss on the referendum result for the smaller of the two most significant branches of the country’s legal profession. She has just launched a working group to chew over the implications of Brexit on the Bar, with Hugh Mercer, QC, of Essex Court Chambers to oversee the discussion. “Top of the working group’s agenda”, said Doerries, “is securing free movement for lawyers within Europe and other jurisdictions where barristers have benefited from European trade agreements.” That might be a tall order, as EU leaders smarting over the UK’s snub to their club may not be enthusiastic about handing British lawyers any special treatment.
Nonetheless, Doerries is confident that a deal can be struck that will “allow [English and Welsh] legal professionals throughout the EU to continue providing the advice and legal representation that is vital to their clients’ business and economic interests, and to stability and growth across a range of sectors.” In typical lawyer style, the Bar Council added a rider to the launch of the working party. “Its remit does not include seeking to influence the government’s decision to leave or remain in the EU, on which the Bar Council has maintained, and continues to maintain, a politically neutral position.”
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Lawyers in the wings for Team Corbyn
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In the heat of a fractious meeting on Tuesday of the Labour Party’s national executive committee, the “Beast of Bolsover”, Dennis Skinner, is understood to have become typically combative. “I’ll set the lawyers on you,” is a paraphrased version of the approach he adopted to Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, if the committee barred Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader, from an automatic place on this summer’s leadership ballot. In the end, Corbyn did not need to call on Skinner to make that threat real, as the committee voted by 18-14 to allow him a free pass on to the ballot. But the lawyers waiting in the wings – or, more accurately, kicking the heels outside the meeting in the corridor – were Martin Howe, the senior partner of Howe & Co, a human rights law firm in London, along with Michael Mansfield, QC, and his junior Mark McDonald. The Brief understands that the legal team’s view before the committee vote was that the party’s rules were “plain and unequivocal that the sitting leader must go straight on the ballot”. Plain and unequivocal – just the sort of language the Beast likes.
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Paddy Mayhew and the bells
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The death of Lord Mayhew, QC, at the end of last month has revealed a curious unknown fact about the former attorney general of England and Wales and of Northern Ireland. Mayhew – who was also the longest serving secretary of state for Northern Ireland – was in retirement a keen bell-ringer. Sources at the barrister’s funeral relate that as local church warden he was instrumental in getting the bells back into functioning order in Kilndown, a village in Kent. The silk – known as Paddy – recruited locals as well as experienced ringers from other churches to train them. A plaque in the church porch records him as one of the millennium ringers. So renowned had Mayhew become that the latest issue of Ringing World – the magazine for anoraks on the end of a rope – detailed his exploits with the Kent County Association of Change Ringers.
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Towering over Brexit
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Developers and their lawyers spent much of the run up to the EU referendum sounding doom-laden warnings over the implications of a Brexit on the “luxury” property market – so they must perform something of a reverse ferret now the UK is headed for the departure lounge. Leading cheerleaders in a bid to prevent the market from talking itself into a downturn has been Taylor Wessing, the Anglo-German law firm based in the City of London, which has just cut a “facility agreement” for £320 million in financing for the Landmark Pinnacle. The name is for once not an example of developer hyperbole, as the 75-storey tower in London’s Docklands is set to be the tallest residential building in Europe. And the fact that the deal was still done despite the Brexit result was leapt on by Paul Lawrence, a partner at the firm and its head of real estate. “Foreign investors like the UK and will still like the UK,” he told The Brief. "This transaction is proof that the market for London assets is still strong and that post-Brexit – and with it the accompanying economic uncertainty – there is still appetite if the right deal is to be had on the right asset.” Elsewhere in the deal room … Odeon – the name that is synonymous with UK high street cinemas – is the latest Great British institution to fall into foreign hands, with Pinsent Masons, the City law firm, helping it on its way. Tom Leman, a private equity partner at the firm, advised AMC, an US entertainment business, on the $1 billion deal. And the lawyers couldn’t resist a referendum reference – “the deal is believed to be the largest corporate transaction of its type, involving a UK-headquartered, company to sign since … Brexit,” said a statement. Osborne Clarke, the City and West Country practice, acted for the management team of Odeon. And the deal is conditional on competition clearance by the European Commission (yes, it still gets a look in until an exit deal is struck) and is subject to consultation with the European Works Council.
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“If the UK is to be a stable long-term home for international capital, then investors need to have confidence that tax rules will not change with the shift of political winds.”
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Sophie Dworetzsky, a partner at Withers, a London-based international law firm with a client list bulging with the mega-wealthy, writing in the practice’s suggested “manifesto” for Theresa May.
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