Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. At common law a lease is a contract between landlord and tenant which, if the landlord himself has or acquires an estate in the land, vests a leasehold estate in the tenant. The lease will ordinarily contain covenants to be performed by the tenant during the term of the lease and (in the absence of express contrary provision) these covenants mean what they say. A tenant who has covenanted to pay the rent during the term is liable to pay the rent during the term, whether or not he has assigned the leasehold estate to someone else. 2. This rule was changed by section 5(2) of the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995, which provides that if a tenant assigns the demised premises, he is released from his covenants. But the change applies only to tenancies granted after the Act came into force on 1 January 1996. The common law continues to apply to earlier tenancies, but subject to restrictions contained in sections 17 to 20. For present purposes, the relevant r...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 1. By the Treaty on Accession that was signed in Athens on 16 April 2003 an agreement was entered into for the accession on 1 May 2004 of 10 new member states to the European Union, including the Republic of Poland. The European Union (Accessions) Act 2003 made provision for the Accession Treaty to be implemented into domestic law. One of the issues that the Accession Treaty addressed in the case of the acceding member states other than Cyprus and Malta (“the A8 states”) was the freedom of movement for workers which is guaranteed by article 39 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (“article 39EC”). The accession of Cyprus and Malta, on account of their small size, was not seen as being likely to overload the labour markets of the 15 existing member states. But it was decided as an integral part of the Treaty to lay down conditions as to access to their labour markets by nationals of the A8 states. 2. Part 2 of Annex ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. I have had the privilege of reading in draft the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Carswell. I agree with it and, as he has dealt fully with the facts and the law, I shall not detain your Lordships by covering the same ground. For the reasons he gives, I would dismiss the appeal. 2. It may however be of some assistance in future cases if I comment on the intervention by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. In recent years the House has frequently been assisted by the submissions of statutory bodies and non-governmental organisations on questions of general public importance. Leave is given to such bodies to intervene and make submissions, usually in writing but sometimes orally from the bar, in the expectation that their fund of knowledge or particular point of view will enable them to provide the House with a more rounded picture than it would otherwise obtain. The House is grateful to such bodies for their help. 3. An intervention is howe...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD PHILLIPS OF WORTH MATRAVERS My Lords, 1. This appeal raises the question of the nature of the investigation that must be carried out by the State whenever a prisoner in custody makes an attempt to commit suicide that nearly succeeds and which leaves him with serious injury. 2. The respondent, who has been referred to as JL, was born in Jamaica on 5 October 1981. He came to this country in May 2002 and, on 18 July 2002, was arrested and charged with possessing cocaine with intent to supply. He was remanded in custody to Feltham Young Offender Institution (“Feltham”). There, on 19 August 2002, he was found hanging from the bars of the window of his cell, having used a sheet to make a noose around his neck. He had stopped breathing, but was resuscitated. Deprivation of oxygen had resulted in serious brain damage. He has been left incompetent to conduct his own affairs. 3. The London Area Manager of the Prison Service initiated an investigation into what had occurred. He ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD PHILLIPS OF WORTH MATRAVERS My Lords, Introduction 1. The facts of this case raise issues of public importance as to the ambit of section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986. It is unfortunate that both before the Court of Appeal and this House the appellant was content to found his case on one narrow issue that is fact specific and much less significant than the wider issues. Those wider issues were canvassed in argument, though Mr Pannick QC for the respondent made the point that he had not come prepared to deal with them. Your Lordships will on this appeal resolve the narrow issue. I propose however to make some provisional observations on the wider issues so that the effect of the decision in this case is not misconstrued. 2. The appellant is an environmental educator and performing artist who is a regular participant in the monthly Critical Mass Cycle Ride (“Critical Mass”). The nature of Critical Mass is central to both the narrow and the wider issues. It has been a...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. For my part, I would have been content to dismiss these appeals for the reasons given by Carnwath LJ in his lucid and convincing judgment. But since your Lordships are minded in one respect to differ from his analysis, I must explain why on this point I regretfully feel obliged to dissent. For this purpose, I gratefully adopt the recital of the facts and statutory provisions in the speech to be delivered by my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, which I have had the advantage of reading in draft. 2. The Leasehold Reform Act 1967 provided in section 9 that the price payable for the house should be the amount which, on certain specified assumptions, it would be expected to realise if sold on the open market. The open market means everyone who could reasonably be expected to be interested in buying. Among these potential purchasers there will sometimes be one or more to whom the property would be worth more than to others. In IRC v Clay [1914]...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. The State of Missouri alleges that on 13 February 1997 the appellant Ralston Wellington committed two murders in Kansas City. According to the evidence submitted on behalf of the prosecutor, the appellant was a Jamaican drug dealer carrying on a substantial business in Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom. While he was staying with a woman in Kansas City, a member of her family took about US$70,000 from his room. The appellant made the woman drive him and two other Jamaicans to the house where the thief had been staying. They entered with guns firing, killed two of the occupants (one of them a pregnant young woman) and injured another. The victims do not appear to have been concerned in the theft and the money was afterwards returned by the thief. 2. The appellant is charged with murder in the first degree, defined in section 565.020 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri as knowingly causing the death of another person after deliberation upon the m...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinions on this appeal of my noble and learned friends Lord Rodger of Earlsferry and Baroness Hale of Richmond and am in full agreement that, for the reasons they give, this appeal should be dismissed. There are two matters, however, on which I want to add a few words of my own. In doing so I gratefully adopt and need not repeat Baroness Hale’s outline of the facts and of the relevant legislative background to the issues. 2. The first matter on which I want to comment is the locus standi of the respondent, the adult daughter of Mrs Savage, the deceased, to have instituted the action that has led to this appeal. Following Mrs Savage’s self-inflicted death, an inquest was held into the causes and circumstances of her death. The inquest was held in public, the investigation by the coroner into the circumstances and causes of the death was a full one - no one has suggested that it was in any re...
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 would allow the appeals in Knowsley Housing Trust v White and Porter v Shepherds Bush Housing Association, but dismiss the appeal in Honeygan-Green v Islington London Borough Council. LORD WALKER OF GESTINGTHORPE My Lords, 2. I have had the privilege of reading in draft the magisterial opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. I am in full agreement with it, and for the reasons that Lord Neuberger gives I would dispose of these three appeals as he proposes. 3. I venture to add one brief footnote, and I do so largely as a matter of respect for Lord Browne-Wilkinson, who gave the leading speech in this House in Burrows v Brent London Borough Council [1996] 1 WLR 1448. Lord Browne-Wilkinson did not, as I read the authorities, invent the rather unfortunate phrase “tole...
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 Hope of Craighead. For the reasons he gives, with which I agree, I too would dismiss these appeals. LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 2. On 10 January 2003 Shaun Riley was working in the course of his employment with the first appellant, Chargot Ltd, at Heskin Hall Farm, near Chorley in Lancashire. Extensive works were being carried out on the farm, which was owned by the Ruttle Group of companies. The second appellant, Ruttle Contracting Ltd, a member of the group, was the principal contractor. The third appellant, George Henry Ruttle, was a director of the first appellant. He was also the second appellant’s managing director. The works included the construction of a car park. This required the excavation from the site of a quantity of topsoil. A dumper truck was then used to move the spoil over a distance of about 500 yards to a depression in a field, beside whi...
Tag this Judgment!