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| Friday September 6 2019 |
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By Jonathan Ames
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It’s Friday . . .
And to set you up nicely for the weekend, three of the most senior judges in the country are set to rule on the prime minister’s plans to give MPs a few days off.
But it really isn’t all about Brexit here at The Brief. See our coverage of moves to make victims of traffic accidents pay £180 for medical reports and our analysis of the chancellor’s spending bonanza for the justice system, which, to be fair, could be seen as being about Brexit.
A veteran City lawyer has a new job — see our Churn column — and scroll down to our Blue Bag diary for why Brexit (oh, there it is again) has spoiled one QC’s safari holiday.
All that and more in this morning's must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip.
Catherine Baksi, a freelance journalist, contributed to today’s bulletin.
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Today
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JOHNSON 'ABUSED POWER' BY SUSPENDING PARLIAMENT
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MPs ‘denied voice’ in challenge against prorogation
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Judge rejects NHS bid to stop Muslim representing sick girl
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Terminally ill ex-teacher pleads for change in assisted dying law
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Comment: Mass claims loom over holiday pay for casual workers
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| Tweet us @timeslaw with your views. |
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Story of the Day
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Johnson ‘abused power’ by suspending parliament
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Boris Johnson’s attempt to suspend parliament is “contrary to constitutional principle” and an “abuse of power”, three senior judges were told yesterday.
Lord Pannick, QC (above), representing Gina Miller, the businesswoman who won a Brexit ruling in 2016, told the High Court that the prime minister had “shut down the operation of the UK’s sovereign body at a time of political upheaval and crisis”.
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Read the full story
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Comment
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Comment: Mass claims loom over holiday pay for casual workers
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The complexity of calculating paid leave could be simplified by a no-deal Brexit, Jane Amphlett writes
Airline passengers left stranded because of computer crashes or strikes might be forgiven for thinking that they suffered the biggest holiday-related issues in recent memory.
They pale into insignificance, however, when compared with the number of workers whose employers underpaid them for annual leave, even employers that followed official guidance.
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Read the full story
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News round-up
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MPs ‘denied voice’ in challenge against prorogation
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Sitting members of parliament were denied the opportunity to voice their concerns in a critical legal challenge to the prime minister’s decision to shut down parliament, a leading barrister has claimed.
Three Labour MPs, including Tom Watson (above), the party's deputy leader, applied to intervene in the judicial review of Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament.
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Read the full story
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Judge rejects NHS bid to stop Muslim representing sick girl
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The parents of a seriously ill girl have won the right to appoint a Muslim relative as her representative in court against the wishes of doctors.
Tafida Raqeeb, five, from Newham in east London, is in a coma suffering from a rare brain condition after an injury in February. Doctors at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel say there is no chance of recovery and believe it would be in her best interests to remove her ventilator and allow her to die, the High Court was told.
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Read the full story
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Terminally ill ex-teacher pleads for change in assisted dying law
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A terminally ill former head teacher made a final plea for assisted dying to be legalised in Britain as he travelled yesterday to Switzerland to end his life.
Richard Selley, 65, is scheduled to die today at the Dignitas clinic, which has handled the cases of a series of terminally ill Britons over the past few years. Mr Selley, from Perth, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2015.
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Read the full story
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Victims in traffic accidents to pay £180 for medical reports
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Litigants injured in minor traffic accidents will have to pay upfront to receive their medical reports online, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.
Medco, an online portal for sourcing medical reports in soft-tissue injury claims, will be extended to cover all personal injury claims related to road traffic accidents (RTA) under £5,000, ministers said after a consultation.
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Read the full story
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In Brief
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- British Land sparks legal battle over Monsoon rescue – Sky News
- Swansea City FC could face legal action over 2016 sale – BBC Sport
- Judge feuds with law professor over Epstein accuser hearing – New York Post
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News analysis
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Analysis: Budget boost for the criminal justice system is a drop in the ocean
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Lawyers have dismissed the spending pledge as insignificant and say it fails to make up for previous cuts, Catherine Baksi writes
Flinging money at every department in his spending review announced on Wednesday, Sajid Javid said that he would increase the justice ministry’s budget by 4.9 per cent in real terms in 2021.
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Read the full story
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Comment
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Regulators need more carrot than stick to improve diversity
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Leading by example and gentle pressure from clients are the best ways to meaningful change in financial services, Rosemarie Paul writes
There is a dawning – if overdue – realisation in financial services that diversity and inclusion matter. This includes regulators, who are coming to understand that they have an active part to play in effecting change.
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Read the full story
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Quote of the day
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We don't have a word for crime. Our word is mistake.
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Judge Eugene Creighton, a Blood Tribe member who speaks the Blackfoot language, at the opening of the Calgary indigenous court in Canada, which seeks to use restorative justice
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Read the full story
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Comment
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CVAs can save or exploit
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Landlords risk paying the price when blue-chip tenants ask to change the arrangement, Doug Robertson writes
Retail was the darling of the property sector until recently. After the property crash, 2009 came with several prominent retail company voluntary arrangements — JJB Sports, Stylo Shoes, Miss Sixty — but the high street recovered more quickly than other areas of property.
Now the retail sector is struggling for several reasons, such as business rates, multi-channel retailing (otherwise known as the internet), increased costs owing to Brexit and sterling’s low value, the minimum/living wage, changing tastes and too much debt. In recent years there have been more CVAs, such as the arrangement for Arcadia Group, and landlords face a dilemma.
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Read the full story
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Tweet of the day
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| Is it actually a legal obligation for everyone to tweet at least once that “Jo Johnson has resigned to spend less time with his family”? |
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@ShoaibMKhan
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Blue Bag
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No need to panic, just come home
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Lawyers and observers have hyperbolically declared the legal challenge to the prime minister’s decision to suspend parliament, heard yesterday by three of the most senior judges, as the constitutional case of a lifetime.
After telling politicians and the press that he would not seek to prorogue parliament, Boris Johnson did just that last month — perhaps hoping the top constitutional lawyers would miss the news as they would still be on their summer holidays during the two-month court vacation.
During his submissions, Lord Pannick, QC, the barrister representing the businesswoman Gina Miller, who is leading the challenge, revealed that the prime minister’s announcement had caught lawyers in the hop and many involved in the litigation had been called back from abroad.
“I was on safari in Botswana enjoying it very much,” Lord Pannick said, until he got the news about the challenge. Despite the relatively short interval between his return to Blighty and the case, Lord Pannick’s legal research had been extensive, citing authorities during the hearing that extended all the way back to 1611.
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The Churn
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City veteran takes top slot at Axiom Stone
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Jonathan Metliss has been appointed chairman of Axiom Stone, the London and Birmingham law firm.
Mr Metliss is a corporate finance specialist and in 1982 was one of the founding partners of SJ Berwin.
The position of chairman was created for him after he joined Axiom Stone in January. He is a governor of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and the chairman of Action Against Discrimination, a charity he established to combat racism in sport.
Mr Metliss has been actively involved in the Jewish community and Israel-related affairs for many years and is a member of the defence committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Sarosh Zaiwalla, the founder and senior partner of Zaiwalla & Co, a London arbitration and litigation law firm, has become a patron of the children’s charity Healing Little Hearts. The British charity sends teams of medical and nursing volunteers to developing countries to perform heart surgery on babies and children born with congenital heart disease.
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