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| Wednesday December 6 2017 |
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By Frances Gibb and Jonathan Ames
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Good morning … Some 21st century problems to be dealt with today. First, the new lord chief justice is worried that online abuse is becoming a real problem for the judiciary. As Lord Burnett of Maldon is the youngest judge to hold the position for about 50 years, he should at least know what “online” means.
The gig economy is another of those new-fangled developments and Uber, a taxi-hailing app, has been in the litigation crosshairs over its approach to the employment status of its drivers.
It wanted to leapfrog to the Supreme Court for a decision in this business-critical point, but has been told that it must get stuck in traditional traffic and go to the Court of Appeal first. Indeed, sheer weight of traffic means that the case is unlikely to be heard for another six months.
While waiting in traffic in a cab, on a bus or anywhere else, check out this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip. And for more in-depth coverage ...
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Today
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JUDGES FACE TORRENT OF ABUSE ONLINE, SAYS LORD CHIEF
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Divorce courts for super-rich win cautious welcome from lawyers
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British IP lawyers could lose £1.7bn in fees after Brexit, research finds
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Uber loses bid to leapfrog appeal court in employment case
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No win, no fee cases can move between law firms
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Blue Bag diary: Courts service chief needs a lift in spirits
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The Churn: Chalk one up for gender diversity (with a caveat) at Eversheds
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More Churn: Sir William Blair retires from High Court bench
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Analysis: Private prosecutions are a legal Wild West
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Transatlantic lawyers: How New York sets the bar high
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Analysis: Tesco’s Booker buyout is bad news for shoppers
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Transatlantic lawyers
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Premium
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How New York sets the bar high
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America may be the land of the free, but British lawyers face a restrictive process to requalify there. Amber Melville-Brown starts a series of reports on her bid to take a bite of the Big Apple
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Story of the Day
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Judges face torrent of abuse online, says new lord chief
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The rule of law is under threat in Britain as judges face a “torrent of personal abuse” online, the country’s most senior judge said yesterday.
Lord Burnett of Maldon, speaking at his first press conference since he became lord chief justice and head of the judiciary of England and Wales in October, said that there was a “growing number of cases where judges are threatened and physically abused”.
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Read the full story
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News round-up
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Divorce courts for super-rich win cautious welcome from lawyers
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Controversial plans to create a court for super-rich couples to battle over financial issues when divorcing have received a qualified welcome from specialist lawyers. Sir James Munby, head of the family courts in England and Wales, said that financial remedies courts would deal with claims that could involve millions of pounds and take several years to resolve.
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Trademark lawyers could lose £1.7bn in fees after Brexit, research finds
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British businesses with EU-registered trademarks could lose their protection unless ministers take urgent action, intellectual property specialists warned yesterday. It is predicted that if a deal over trademarks is not reached with Brussels, the impact of Brexit on intellectual property lawyers will be between £8.5 million and £1.7 billion a year in lost fees.
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Read the full story
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Uber loses bid to leapfrog appeal court in employment case
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Uber has failed in its attempt to bypass the Court of Appeal and have Britain’s highest court determine the long-running battle over employment rights in the gig economy. The taxi-hailing company lost a hearing at the employment appeal tribunal last month and applied to have its appeal of the case, Aslam, Farrar & others, heard before the Supreme Court. The application was rejected and the case will now be heard at the Court of Appeal.
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No win, no fee cases can move between law firms, appeal judges rule
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Conditional fee agreements can be transferred between law firms, the Court of Appeal said yesterday in a landmark ruling for legal costs. The appeal court overturned a decision from a district judge about a no win, no fee agreement over a clinical negligence claim involving Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
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In Brief
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- Damian Green threatened with legal action by former police officer he accused of lying – Daily Telegraph
- Jewish nursery teacher sacked for living in sin wins legal fight – The Times
- Government threatens to use law to force Channel 4 out of London – The Independent
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Analysis
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Private prosecutions are a legal Wild West
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When a claimant decides to bring a case on their own, the lack of regulation raises issues around ethics, disclosure and privilege, writes Jae Carwardine
Private prosecutions are increasingly popular, but their popularity has brought increasing dangers.
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Read the full story
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Analysis
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Premium
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Tesco’s Booker buyout is bad news for shoppers
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The watchdog is failing to consider the role of potential competition in Britain’s narrowing grocery sector, writes Stephen Hornsby
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Blue Bag
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Courts service chief needs a lift in spirits
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Poor Susan Acland-Hood. The hard-pressed chief executive of the courts and tribunals service has constantly to face angry lawyers over crumbling court infrastructure, and she clearly doesn’t get a moment’s peace.
Several days ago, Rhys Taylor, a barrister arbitrator and mediator in family and property cases, was unlucky enough to be stuck in a lift at the Royal Courts of Justice in London with three other unfortunates.
After two hours had passed, Taylor had clearly had enough and decided to take to social media to vent a tiny bit of spleen. “Lift engineer says they will not be able to attend for 2 hours!!” he shouted into the twittersphere, but also, importantly, at Acland-Hood.
To her credit, Acland-Hood did not pretend to be in a high-powered meeting, but responded. “We’re doing all we can to resolve this asap,” she said, also promising to provide regular updates.
Of course Twitter is a public platform, so the saga became something of a legal profession mini-soap opera. Others piled in with helpful titbit tweets relating that it was not the first time the Victorian-era RCJ had suffered a lift malfunction.
Chris Bryden, a barrister at 4 King’s Bench Walk, said that he had been warned off the lifts in the Thomas More Building completely.
Eventually Taylor and fellow members of the “RCJ lift 4” were freed to much cyber cheering. Those who missed events on the day can relive the saga here.
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The Churn
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Chalk one up for gender diversity (with a caveat) at Eversheds
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The latest transatlantic law firm on the block has scored a win for gender diversity in the legal profession by electing a female leader — but there is a caveat.
Pamela Thompson, head of the financial services department at Eversheds Sutherland, has been elected to chair the firm’s non-US business operations for a four-year term.
Thompson, whose main areas of practice involve investment fund structuring and financial services regulation, will move into the top slot in May. She will succeed Paul Smith, who did not stand for re-election.
The English and US firms merged in February, creating a practice with combined annual revenue of more than £600 million.
Elsewhere in the Square Mile (well, in Canary Wharf, actually), male dominance remained as Clifford Chance re-elected Matthew Layton as its global managing partner.
Layton retained the title not only because he was unchallenged by any of the firm’s female partners, but because the election was completely uncontested. Vladimir Putin eat your heart out …
But then the firm’s lawyers were probably looking for stability as Clifford Chance and one of its partners have just been hit with a £100,000 fine for running an unlawful conditional fee agreement.
Sir William Blair retires from High Court bench
Sir William Blair, brother of the former prime minister Tony, has retired from the High Court bench. Blair, 67, sat in the Queen’s Bench Division and is standing down three years before the mandatory retirement age for senior judges.
He was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1972 and took silk in 1994. He was appointed as a recorder in 1998, a part-time chairman of the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal in 2001, a deputy High Court Judge in 2003 and chairman of the Pensions Regulatory Tribunal in 2005.
In 2008, he was promoted to the Queen’s Bench Division and he became an upper tribunal judge for the tax chamber in 2009.
He was appointed president of the board of appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities in 2012, and the judge in charge of the Commercial Court in 2016.
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Closing Statement
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A poisoned atmosphere in court
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There will no doubt be an inquiry into how Slobodan Praljak managed to smuggle poison into the dock so he could kill himself at the Hague last week (James Morton writes).
In 1904 there was no doubt at all that the fraudster James Whitaker Wright brought the poison in himself to the law courts. Whitaker Wright was a man who made, spent and, perhaps unluckily, lost fortunes.
He ploughed money into building what is now the Bakerloo Line on the London Underground and, strapped for cash when his shares in Australian mines collapsed, began to inflate the balance sheets of other companies he owned.
In 1900 his companies failed, bankrupting investors and members of the London Stock Exchange. Three years later with an adverse summing up, the jury returned a guilty verdict on a series of fraud charges inside an hour.
Before sentencing, Wright pencilled the Roman numeral VII on a note passed to his fashionable solicitor, Sir George Lewis. He was correct.
He was allowed a conference before he was taken to prison and, after smoking a cigar and drinking whisky thoughtfully supplied by Lewis, Wright went to the lavatory where he swallowed cyanide. He was also found to have a loaded revolver in his coat pocket, just in case.
It seems that his barrister, Sir Richard Muir, always thought Wright was innocent and all he had needed was a little more time to turn things around.
Certainly public opinion immediately turned sharply in his favour. A generous verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned at the coroner’s court.
And literary anoraks will be interested to know that Wright appears as George Ponderevo in HG Wells’s novel Tono-Bungay.
James Morton is a former criminal law solicitor and now author
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