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Frances Gibb and Jonathan Ames bring this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip. Today - Wheelchair user wins landmark bus access ruling
- Supreme Court to hand down Brexit ruling next Tuesday
- Shareholders ‘won’t support action on rule of law issues’
- Anonymity for suspect risks censoring media, judges told
- Rolls-Royce deal ‘could kill self-reporting’ of fraud
- Law firms dominate best employers equality list
- Collapsed King & Wood Mallesons stays in London
- Comment: Big business needs to work for the rule of law
- The Churn: Diana’s lawyer takes ‘novel’ chair at UCL
- Blue Bag diary: Lord Phillips and the beating scandal
Tweet us @TimesLaw with your views. |
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Wheelchair user wins landmark bus access ruling
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Disabled passengers claimed a “significant” victory yesterday when the UK’s highest court ruled that bus drivers must do more to enforce their rights to wheelchair spaces. In what was hailed as a crucial “cultural change”, the Supreme Court said drivers must do more to ensure that wheelchair users had priority over designated spaces, including shaming those who unreasonably refuse to make way. It was not enough to request that mothers with buggies or others vacate wheelchair spaces, the judges said. Drivers should require them to do so and back that up by refusing to drive on if necessary to put pressure on or shame “recalcitrant” passengers. The Times reports that the landmark case was brought by Doug Paulley (pictured), from Wetherby, West Yorkshire, who tried to board a bus operated by FirstGroup, which had a sign saying: “Please give up this space if needed for a wheelchair user.” Paulley was left at the stop and missed his train because a woman with a sleeping baby in a pushchair refused to move from the designated area when asked by the bus driver. She said the buggy would not fold. FirstGroup has a policy of “requesting but not requiring” non-disabled travellers, including those with babies and pushchairs, to vacate spaces if needed by wheelchair users. Chris Fry of Unity Law, the solicitor who acted for Paulley, welcomed the ruling but said there was more to be done. He told Paulley’s supporters, who gathered at the court: “When you get on a bus, you will have the right to ride. It is not a question as to whether or not you will be turned away. He has won that for you, we should be very grateful for that.” |
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Supreme Court to hand down Brexit ruling next Tuesday
Eleven justices on the Supreme Court will deliver next Tuesday the denouement to a soap opera that has gripped politicians and lawyers for the last several months – the definitive word on whether MPs will have a vote on the UK’s plans to leave the EU. Court officials announced yesterday that the judgment in R (on the application of Miller & Dos Santos) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union will be handed down at 9.30am on January 24. The case – which has sparked emotive protests on both sides – leapfrogged the Court of Appeal after the High Court ruled in favour of the applicants last November. That ruling sparked fury in some elements of the pro-Brexit press with the judges labelled by one newspaper as “enemies of the people”. The lord chancellor, Liz Truss, was accused by former judges of the bench and lawyers of not robustly defending the judiciary, as her constitutional role stipulates.
The case – which was brought by a City hedge fund operator and a London hairdresser – created history by being heard by the full bench of the Supreme Court. Whichever way the court rules, commentators are already speculating that the ruling will be more academic than practical. If the government loses, ministers are expected to rush a short bill on the Article 50 trigger for leaving the EU before parliament. It is considered unlikely that either MPs or peers will block the legislation.
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Shareholders ‘won’t support action on rule of law issues’
Corporate boards are ignoring rule of law issues in jurisdictions around the world because they assume that addressing them will antagonise shareholders, a leading international lawyer says today. In a comment article for The Brief, Guy Beringer, the former senior partner at Allen & Overy, one of the City of London’s “magic circle” elite, reproaches multinational corporations for not concentrating on fundamental legal issues in the areas where they operate. Beringer, who is now co-chairman of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, makes his comments a day after a group of international corporations launched a network to promote the rule of law. The group – which includes the FTSE 100 companies BP, BT, Diageo, HSBC, Shell, Unilever and Vodafone – is chaired by Graham Vinter, the former general counsel at BG Group, a UK oil and gas business, who is now practising at the London office of the US law firm Covington & Burling. The Bingham Centre said the network would address specific rule of law problems in the countries where the businesses operate. The group is working on issues such as the proportionality of regulatory penalties and forms of redress, the implications of Brexit for trade and investment, tensions between national and international human rights standards, and rule of law training for boards and senior managers. “As multinational companies develop their supply chains and markets both at home and around the world,” said Vinter, “they are encountering a complex set of legal risks including contractual enforceability, regulatory predictability and bribery and corruption in all its forms, none of which can be addressed without the rule of law.” At the launch of the network in London yesterday the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said: “Business can also play a key part in helping to build and sustain the rule of law in those countries where it has a presence, helping to make the world a safer and more equitable place.” See comment below
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Anonymity for suspect risks censoring media, judges told
Media coverage of criminal trials will be handicapped if a man named in evidence is allowed anonymity, the Supreme Court was told yesterday. A lawyer for the media told the justices that it would mean that any newspaper that identified a suspect named in evidence would run the risk of being sued. “Reporters would be at risk of self-censoring reports of a criminal trial to avoid being sued for breach of privacy,” said Gavin Millar, QC, from Matrix Chambers in Gray’s Inn. “It would chill court reporting dramatically.” The QC was arguing the case for The Times and Newsquest, publishers of the Oxford Mail, and a journalist on each paper, Andrew Norfolk and Ben Wilkinson, who are challenging the appeal for anonymity by a man named in a sex grooming trial. Miller said the court was being asked to create an exception to the open justice principle, which allows the reporting of evidence heard in open court, by granting anonymity to the man, known only as PNM, because to identify him as a suspect in a child-sex case would potentially subject him to public vilification. He warned that if the appeal succeeded, the only suspects likely to demand anonymity at future trials were people wealthy enough to send lawyers to court to threaten legal action against any newspaper that identified them. PNM wants to prevent the media publicising that he was arrested in 2012 in connection with a major investigation into child grooming and prostitution in the Oxford area. |
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Rolls-Royce deal ‘could kill self-reporting’ of fraud
A deal cut between Rolls-Royce and fraud investigators could be the “death knell” for the regime by which businesses are encouraged to self-report potential corruption, a senior lawyer said yesterday. Earlier this week Sir Brian Leveson, president of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court, approved a deferred prosecution agreement between the Serious Fraud Office and the aerospace multinational. The deal involved Rolls-Royce paying a penalty of nearly £500 million, the largest corporate crime fine ever in the UK. The company admitted that its intermediaries had been involved in corruption and false accounting spanning over three decades across seven jurisdictions, relating to the sale of aero engines and energy systems. While specialist lawyers agreed that the agreement – the third of its kind in the UK – was significant, Tony Lewis, a partner and the head of fraud and corporate crime at Fieldfisher, expressed concern over “unintended consequences”. “This DPA may be the death knell for self-reporting,” predicted Lewis, “as businesses take the view that the full rewards of a DPA may be available to them in circumstances where they address corruption issues in a reactive rather than a proactive way." Lewis claimed it was clear from the judgment and the statement of facts “that Rolls-Royce did not self-report. Rather, the SFO came knocking and Rolls-Royce responded co-operatively. This co-operation, which the court and the SFO considered 'extraordinary', unlocked a DPA, and also an additional discount, in circumstances where objectively the agreed offending was at the egregious end of the scale.”
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Law firms dominate best employers equality list
Law firms dominated this year’s list of best employers for sexual orientation equality, a leading campaign group said yesterday. Pinsent Masons, the City of London international firm, led a group of 17 law firms on the annual list produced by Stonewall. The firm was placed second on the overall list of 100 top employers, trailing only Lloyds Banking Group. Four other Square Mile firms – Clifford Chance, the London office of Baker McKenzie, Berwin Leighton Paisner and Norton Rose Fulbright – finished in the top ten. A Stonewall spokesman confirmed that the legal profession had the highest representation in the overall list. The other firms included are: Dentons and Hogan Lovells, which were joint 17th, Herbert Smith Freehills (24th), Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (25th), CMS Cameron McKenna (31st), DWF (36th), K&L Gates (43rd), Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (49th), Travers Smith (58th), Eversheds (69th), Slaughter and May (70th) and Reed Smith (75th). K&L Gates, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Travers Smith and Slaughter and May were new entrants this year. Stonewall is delighted to see the legal sector take such a prominent place in this year’s index with 17 firms featured in the top 100, as well as one Star Performer, Simmons & Simmons. “The legal sector really is leading by example,” said Elliott Pentland of Stonewall, “demonstrating a true commitment to LGBT diversity and inclusion. It’s hugely exciting and encouraging to see so many firms taking the steps to ensure that their employees can be themselves in the workplace.” Kate Fergusson of Pinsent Masons said that over the last year the firm had “increased our focus on gender identity, introducing gender identity monitoring and reporting, publishing new guidelines on transitioning at work and providing training and awareness-raising sessions for our people”.
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Collapsed King & Wood Mallesons keeps London presence
Seven partners from the London office of King & Wood Mallesons – which went into administration on Tuesday – will maintain a presence in the UK capital for the Sino-Australian branch of the practice. The Asian headquarters of the firm confirmed yesterday that it would retain 17 partners in total so that it could keep a foothold in Europe and the Middle East. The London office – formerly the City firm SJ Berwin until it merged with KWM in 2013 – appointed administrators after various bailout attempts failed. The European arm of the firm is understood to have debts of up to £35 million. In a statement Wang Junfeng, the firm’s global chairman, said keeping the firm’s brand alive in Europe and the Middle East was “a very good outcome for international clients and for the continued development of our firm”. The website Legal Week listed the seven London partners as Joseph Newitt, Greg Stonefield, Mike Wang, Vanessa Docherty, Dorothy Murray, Darren Roiser and Andrei Yakovlev. It is understood that the London partners will focus on corporate, finance and disputes work. The firm said the other lawyers would maintain a KWM presence in Frankfurt, Dubai and Riyadh and affiliated offices in Madrid, Milan and Brussels.
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In Brief
In today's Times Law Elsewhere ... - Rolls-Royce bosses face bribery charges – The Times
- All crime victims 'should get court statement opportunity' – BBC News
- Ministers announce timetable for legal aid cuts review – Law Gazette
- Judges warn government over personal injury reforms – Legal Futures
- Peers give up fight for second Leveson inquiry – The Times
- King & Wood Mallesons: “There’s nothing we could have done differently” – The Lawyer
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The top judge and the beating scandal
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Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers had a stellar career on the judicial bench, becoming the first president of the UK’s Supreme Court – but it all could have turned out rather differently if The Times had not cut him a bit of slack many years ago. As a young barrister, Nicholas Phillips was libel reading for The Times, which involved casting an eye over the paper’s famous law reports. The now retired judge tells us of one report on a ruling by Lord Denning, in which the judge commented that the concept of equity was “not yet past the age of child bearing”. But owing to a tiny glitch, the law report copy read: “Equity is not yet past the age of child beating.” “I overlooked this error,” Lord Phillips told The Brief the other evening, “and accordingly it was published the following day.” Thankfully, he says, “The Times did not sack me.”
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Trump’s inauguration and relative freedoms
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Could this be another example of the Orwellian newspeak in the brave new world of Donald Trump’s USA? Earlier this week, in one of its first rulings of the year, the US Court of Appeal for the Washington DC circuit said that organisers of a protest to coincide with the president-elect’s inauguration tomorrow could be barred from gathering near the ceremony. The Washington Post reports that the judges ruled that the National Park Service could prevent the protesters from gathering at a specific spot near Pennsylvania Avenue without breaching the group’s rights under the first amendment of the US constitution. And the name of the place where the anti-Trump protesters fancied gathering? Freedom Plaza, of course.
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A run down of the big partner and team moves this week
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Diana’s lawyer takes ‘novel’ chair at UCL
The lawyer who acted for Princess Diana and the former wife of one of the Beatles has been appointed as the first chair of law and arts at a leading London university. Anthony Julius, the deputy chairman of Mishcon de Reya, a law firm in the capital, has struck “a novel collaboration” deal between University College’s law and arts and sciences. Julius, who shot to fame when he acted for Diana in her divorce from Prince Charles and then represented Heather Mills in her highly publicised battle with Sir Paul McCartney, will lead ground-breaking research programmes, the university said. He will be focusing on the censorship of literature and the visual arts in liberal democracies, with a publication on the subject set for release in 2020. “This is a unique opportunity for me to teach and champion literature and the visual arts,” said the solicitor, “which is extremely important at a time when artistic freedom is facing increasing censorship in many countries across the world.” Meanwhile, back in the cut-throat world of international law firm poaching, in Shanghai, Clifford Chance, the City of London firm, lost Paula Liu to the local office of the US practice Kirkland & Ellis. Liu is a private equity and mergers and acquisitions specialist. Returning to London, Irwin Mitchell, the national law firm, has lured Ian Cook from the bar to join its partnership. Cook, a family law barrister, makes the move from 1KBW chambers in the Temple.
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