Court : House of Lords
LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speeches of my noble and learned friends Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Hale of Richmond. For the reasons they give, with which I agree, I would allow this appeal and make the order proposed by Baroness Hale. LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 2. The appellants in this appeal are retained fire fighters. They claim that they have been unlawfully discriminated against as to their conditions of employment as compared with those of whole-time fire fighters. The claim is made under the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/1551). Regulation 5(1) provides that a part-time worker has the right not to be treated by his employer less favourably than the employer treats a comparable full-time worker. But before that regulation can be applied there are a number of definitions laid down by the Regulations that need to be satisfied. It is agreed that retained ...
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LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD My Lords, 1. In this case the claimant Mr Haward invested money in a company on the advice of his accountant Mr Austreng. The company failed, and Mr Haward lost his money. The issue before the House concerns a defence of limitation. This was tried as a preliminary issue in the action. 2. Statutes of limitation seek to hold a balance between two competing interests: the interests of claimants in having maximum opportunity to pursue their legal claims, and the interests of defendants in not having to defend stale proceedings. Traditionally the limitation period for most claims is six years. This goes back to the Limitation Act 1623. On its face this period, with extensions in cases of fraud and mistake, is a generous, perhaps over-generous, period within which to be able to start court proceedings in respect of a wrong. 3. However, with certain types of claims this six year period would be far from generous or even reasonable. The starting date for the six ye...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. These appeals have been joined and heard together because they raise an important common issue on the scope and application of the right to respect for the home protected by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. The House is invited to reconsider and depart from its decision in Harrow London Borough Council v Qazi [2003] UKHL 43, [2004] 1 AC 983. The Lambeth appeal 2. The first (Lambeth) appeal also raises a discrete issue on the occupation status of the appellants as the result of transactions between the London Borough of Lambeth, the London and Quadrant Housing Trust and them over a period of years. On that issue, I have had the benefit of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Scott of Foscote, with which I am in complete agreement and to which I cannot usefully add. I need not repeat the facts summarised in his opinion. I take as the legal and factual premise of this opin...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the great benefit of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe. I am in complete agreement with it, and would for the reasons which he gives make the order which he proposes. My noble and learned friend's comprehensive summary of the relevant materials and authorities, for which I am greatly indebted to him, enables me to indicate quite briefly (and with no intention to derogate from his reasoning) why I agree with him. 2. Ms M. the respondent, is the mother of two children who spend the greater part of each week with their father, her former husband from whom she is divorced. Under the Child Support Act 1991 she, as the non-resident parent, is required to contribute to the costs of maintaining the children incurred by the father as the parent with care. The amount of her contribution is calculated according to complex rules laid down in regulations made under the 1991 Act, and are in import...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. It is an old and cherished tradition of our country that everyone should be free to go about their business in the streets of the land, confident that they will not be stopped and searched by the police unless reasonably suspected of having committed a criminal offence. So jealously has this tradition been guarded that it has almost become a constitutional principle. But it is not an absolute rule. There are, and have for some years been, statutory exceptions to it. These appeals concern an exception now found in sections 44-47 of the Terrorism Act 2000 ("the 2000 Act"). The appellants challenge the use made of these sections and, in the last resort, the sections themselves. Since any departure from the ordinary rule calls for careful scrutiny, their challenge raises issues of general importance. 2. The first appellant, Mr Gillan, was a PhD student studying in Sheffield when, on 9 September 2003, he came to London to protest peacefully against an a...
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LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 1. The issue in this appeal is confined to a single point of statutory construction. It arises out of a series of claims brought by about 60,000 part-time workers under the Equal Pay Act 1970. They had been denied access to their employers' occupational pension schemes. This was because the schemes laid down as a condition of membership thresholds as to minimum weekly working hours with which, as part-time workers, they could not comply. Their claims were the subject of a series of test cases under what has been described as the Preston litigation: see Preston and others v Wolverhampton Healthcare N H S Trust and others [1998] ICR 227 (HL), Preston and others v Wolverhampton Healthcare N H S Trust and others (Case C-78/98) [2000] ICR 961 (ECJ) and Preston and others v Wolverhampton Healthcare N H S Trust and others (No 2) [2001] UKHL 5, [2001] ICR 217. The first round of cases dealt with a range of preliminary issues of general application. The current ...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. Mr Ali, the respondent, is now a university student aged 18. The events giving rise to these proceedings took place in 2001-2002, when he was aged 13-14, and of compulsory school age. The issue for decision is whether his rights under article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights were infringed by the appellants between 7 June 2001 and 20 January 2002. The agreed facts 2. In March 2001 the respondent was a pupil at The Lord Grey School ("the school"), a maintained secondary foundation school at Bletchley, where the local education authority is the Milton Keynes Council. On 8 March 2001 a fire was discovered in a classroom at the school. The fire brigade, who were summoned, considered that the fire had been started deliberately. The police were called in. The respondent was one of three pupils seen leaving the classroom before the fire was discovered. He admitted to the police that he had been present, although he attrib...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. The respondent, Shabina Begum, is now aged 17. She contends that the appellants, who are the head teacher and governors of Denbigh High School in Luton ("the school"), excluded her from that school, unjustifiably limited her right under article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights to manifest her religion or beliefs and violated her right not to be denied education under article 2 of the First Protocol to the Convention. Bennett J, ruling on the respondent's application for judicial review at first instance, rejected all these contentions: [2004] EWHC 1389 (Admin); [2004] ELR 374. The Court of Appeal (Brooke, Mummery and Scott Baker LJJ), reversing the judge, accepted each of them: [2005] EWCA Civ 199; [2005] 1 WLR 3372. The appellants, with support from the Secretary of State for Education and Skills as intervener, submit that the judge was right and the Court of Appeal wrong. 2. It is important to stress at the outset that this case conce...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. The immense, perhaps unprecedented, suffering of many people in many countries during the twentieth century had at least one positive result: that it prompted a strong international determination to prevent and prohibit the waging of aggressive war. This determination found expression in the international legal order, and understandably so, since it is states which wage such wars and states that must suppress them. At issue in these appeals is the extent to which, if at all, this international determination is transposed into the domestic legal order of England and Wales. 2. There are 20 appellants before the House. All of them committed acts in February or March 2003 which were, or are alleged to have been, criminal offences, unless there was legal justification for what they did or are said to have done. The issue in each appeal concerns this legal justification, which (depending on the charge in question) differs somewhat from case to case. But ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. Is the tort of misfeasance in public office actionable without proof of financial loss or physical or mental injury and, if so, in what circumstances? Those are the questions which the House must resolve in this appeal by the Home Office, which is the first defendant in these proceedings. There were originally fourteen other defendants in the action, but none is party to this appeal. 2. Mr Watkins was at all material times a convicted prisoner serving a sentence of life imprisonment, first in Wakefield and then in Frankland Prison. He was engaged in a number of legal proceedings, actual and contemplated. This gave rise to correspondence with legal advisers, courts and other bodies. 3. During the relevant period (1 May 1998 to 5 December 2000) the confidentiality of the respondent's legal correspondence was protected, at first by Rule 37A of the Prison Rules 1964 (SI 1964/388) which became (without textual alteration) Rule 39 of the Prison Rules 199...
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