Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. Council Directive 85/374/EEC (the “product liability directive”) provides in article 1 that “the producer shall be liable for damage caused by a defect in his product". Liability is strict: by article 4, all that the injured person need prove is “the damage, the defect and the causal relationship between defect and damage". The primary meaning of “the producer” is the manufacturer, but there circumstances in which someone else can be deemed to be the producer. For example, a supplier may be treated as the producer “unless he informs the injured person, within a reasonable time, of the identity of the producer": see article 3. 2. Article 10 provides for a limitation period of three years from the date on which the plaintiff became aware, or should reasonably have become aware, of the damage. But article 11 contains an additional, “long-stop” period: “Member States shall provide in their legislation t...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. The question in this case is whether it is consistent with Convention rights as defined in section 1(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998 for a couple to be excluded from consideration as adoptive parents of a child on the ground only that they are not married. The woman is the natural mother of the child. The man is not the father but he and the woman have been living together for some years and treat the child as a member of the family. There is some evidence before the House about the nature of their relationship but there have been no findings by the court because the application has been rejected in limine on the grounds that they are not married to each other. 2. The legal obstacle to their adoption application is article 14 of the Adoption (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 (SI 1987/2203(NI 22)): (1) An adoption order shall not be made on the application of more than one person except in the circumstances specified in paragraph[s] (2) … (2) An adoption ord...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. At about 9.30 am on New Year’s Day 2002, towards the end of an all-night New Year’s Eve party held in a flat in Hackney, a shot was fired which killed two men. The appellant Iain Davis was in due course extradited from the United States, indicted on two counts of murder, tried at the Central Criminal Court before His Honour Judge Paget QC and a jury and, on 25 May 2004, convicted on both counts. He appeals to the House against the dismissal of his appeal against conviction by the Court of Appeal Criminal Division on 19 May 2006: [2006] EWCA Crim 1155, [2006] 1 WLR 3130. 2. At trial the appellant admitted that he had been at the party but claimed that he had left before the shooting and denied having been the gunman. Appearances were against him. He had gone to the United States on a false passport shortly after the murders. When questioned by the police after his return to this country he had declined to give any answers. In evidence he...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. On 20 April 2005 the appellant pleaded guilty to the offence of rape of a child under 13, contrary to section 5 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003: (1) A person commits an offence if — (a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with his penis; and (b) the other person is under 13. (2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for life. 2. For the purpose of sentence, the prosecution accepted the appellant’s version of the facts, namely, that the accused was 15 at the time of the offence, the complainant had consented to intercourse and she had told him that she was 15. On 8 July 2005 Judge Hone sentenced him to a 12 month detention and training order. The appellant appealed on the grounds that (1) the conviction violated his right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence under article 6 of the Convention, because it was an offence of strict liabili...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinions of my noble and learned friends Lord Scott of Foscote and Baroness Hale of Richmond. I gratefully adopt their summaries of the background and issues in this appeal. I can state my own conclusions relatively briefly. 2. The conduct of Mr Malcolm in subletting and ceasing to live in the flat let to him by the London Borough of Lewisham (“Lewisham”) had the effect of destroying the security of tenure he had previously enjoyed and breaching the terms of his tenancy so as to give Lewisham what was, in terms of housing law, an unanswerable claim to possession. To defeat that claim Mr Malcolm relied, unsuccessfully before Her Honour Judge Hallon but successfully before the Court of Appeal (Arden, Longmore and Toulson LJJ: [2007] EWCA Civ 763, [2008] Ch 129), on the terms of sections 22 and 24 in Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The question is whether, on the facts an...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. For the reasons he gives, with which I agree, I too would allow these appeals. LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 2. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury and for the reasons he gives, with which I am in full agreement, I, too, would allow these appeals. LORD WALKER OF GESTINGTHORPE My Lords, 3. I am in full agreement with the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, which I have had the advantage of reading in draft. I too would allow these appeals. BARONESS HALE OF RICHMOND My Lords, 4. For the reasons given in the opinion of my noble and learned friend, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, with which I entirely agree, I too would allow these appeals and restore the decisions of the first instance judge in each case. LORD NEUBERGER OF ABBOTSBURY ...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. The appellant, a Kosovar, arrived in this country from Kosovo, via Macedonia, on 2 September 1999. He was then aged 13. He claimed asylum four days later. It was refused on 27 April 2004, a delay of over four and a half years. Conditions in Kosovo having changed, the appellant now has no ground for claiming asylum. But had his application been decided before 10 December 2003, when he became eighteen and so ceased to be an unaccompanied minor, he would, depending on the date of the decision, under the policies in force, from time to time, have been granted exceptional leave to remain in this country for four years or until his eighteenth birthday, with at least the chance of obtaining indefinite leave to remain thereafter. The respondent Secretary of State now seeks to remove him to Kosovo. The appellant resists removal, relying on his rights under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinions of all my noble and learned friends. In the result, I reach the same conclusion as my noble and learned friend Baroness Hale of Richmond, for whose exposition of the issues I also am grateful. But, for reasons given by my noble and learned friends Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, I reach this conclusion with fewer misgivings than she expresses. 2. Viewed through the eyes of the appellants, the Home Secretary’s family policy seems harsh: they have suffered the misfortune of losing their parents and now suffer the additional misfortune of losing a benefit which they would have enjoyed had they arrived here with their parents. But viewed through the eyes of the Home Secretary, the policy looks very different: he faced a formidable administrative problem caused by the difficulty, delay and expense of removing families, and the solution was to grant an indulgenc...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I am in full agreement with it and would, for the reasons he gives, make the order he proposes. LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 2. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I agree with it, and for the reason he gives I would allow the appeal and make the order he proposes. LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 3. I, too, have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. The reasons given by my noble and learned friend for allowing the appeal are, in my opinion, wholly persuasive and I am in full agreement with them. I would make the order that he proposes. BARONESS HALE OF RICHMOND My Lords, 4. I am in full agreement with the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Brow...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I am in full agreement with it, and would for the reasons which he gives allow the appeal and make the order which he proposes. LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 2. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and leaned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I agree with it, and for the reasons he gives I would allow the appeal and make the order that he proposes. LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 3. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion on this appeal prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and am in complete agreement with the reasons he has given for allowing this appeal. My astonishment that the case should have had to come this far for the, as it seems to me, obvious conclusion that the appellant and her four year old child should be permitted to...
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