Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Apr-16-2008
LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. Like him, I can find no merit in any of the grounds on which the decision of the Extra Division was challenged. I would dismiss the appeal. LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 2. I have had the opportunity of reading a draft of the opinion on this appeal prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury and I am in complete and respectful agreement with the reasons he has given for dismissing this appeal. There is nothing I can usefully add and so I too, for the same reasons, would dismiss the appeal. LORD RODGER OF EARLSFERRY My Lords, 3. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech which is to be delivered by my noble and learned friend, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. I am in full agreement with it and, for the reasons he gives, I too would dismiss the appeal. LORD WALKER OF GESTINGTHORPE My Lords, 4. I have ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Apr-16-2008
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. This appeal arises out of an application to quash a permit issued on 12 August 2003 by the Environment Agency (“the Agency”) to Rugby Ltd for the operation of a cement works in Lawford Road, Rugby. The chief grounds are that the Agency did not disclose enough information about the environmental impact of the plant to satisfy its statutory and common law duties of public consultation. Rugby Ltd has since been taken over by the Mexican multinational Cemex and is called Cemex UK Cement Ltd, but I shall for convenience refer to it as “the company". The PPC Regulations 2. Cement has been made at Rugby since the time of Dr Arnold. But the Lawford Road plant was built less than 10 years ago. It represents the latest technology in cement making. When it was built, the manufacture of cement required authorisation under Part I of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Authorisation was granted in 1999 and the plant began commissioning in the following...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Apr-23-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the benefit of reading in draft the opinions of my noble and learned friends Lord Scott of Foscote and Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, whose summaries of the facts, history and issues I gratefully adopt and need not repeat. 2. Like my noble and learned friends I would dismiss the Chief Constable’s appeal. Despite the range, ability and interest of the argument addressed to the House, I can state my conclusions on the two issues raised in argument very shortly and simply. 3. As to the first issue, the test of self-defence as a defence in a civil action is well-established and well-understood. There is no reason in principle why it should be the same test as obtains in a criminal trial, since the ends of justice which the two rules respectively exist to serve are different. There is nothing to suggest that the civil test as currently applied causes dissatisfaction or injustice and no case is made for changing it, even if that were an appr...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Apr-30-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL 1. The issue in this appeal is whether the Secretary of State for Health acted lawfully in issuing the guidance she did to employing bodies within the National Health Service in April 2006. At first instance Stanley Burnton J, who also had other issues to decide, upheld the lawfulness of the guidance: [2007] EWHC 199 (QB). The Court of Appeal (Sedley, Maurice Kay and Rimer LJJ) [2007] EWCA Civ 1139 held that it was unlawful. The Secretary of State challenges that decision in this appeal to the House. Pending the outcome of this litigation the guidance has been suspended. Background 2. Under sections 1 - 3 of the National Health Service Act 1977, as under its successor statute, the Secretary of State for Health had an overall responsibility to provide or secure the provision of medical and related services under the auspices of the National Health Service. To ensure the provision of adequate care and treatment it is necessary that there should be appropriately q...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : May-21-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. The Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers CJ, McCombe and Gross JJ: [2006] EWCA Crim 707) certified the following point of law of general public importance as involved in its decision now under appeal: “If a defendant is charged with an offence not specified in section 31(3) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, to what extent is he entitled to rely on the protections afforded by article 31 of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees?” Differently expressed, the question is whether, to the extent that the protection given to a defendant by section 31(3) of the 1999 Act does not match that which the United Kingdom is bound in international law to give by article 31 of the Refugee Convention, our domestic law gives a defendant any remedy. The formulation of the question clearly assumes that the offence charged against the defendant is not within the scope of section 31(3)...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : May-21-2008
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. The appellants are former residents of a children’s home called Nazareth House at Cardonald in Glasgow which was run by the religious order known as the Poor Sisters of Nazareth. In May 2000 they raised separate actions of damages against the respondents in the Court of Session for loss, injury and damage in respect of physical abuse which they claim to have suffered during their time there. They maintain that they were regularly assaulted and subjected to cruel punishments, as a result of which they suffered pain and distress and long-standing psychological or psychiatric problems and that these led to their being disadvantaged in the workplace and to financial loss. The respondents deny these allegations. They also say that the...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Jun-11-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Carswell. I am in full agreement with it, and for the reasons that he gives would restore the order of the judge and dismiss CD’s application for judicial review. LORD SCOTT OF FOSCOTE My Lords, 2. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the opinion prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Carswell. I am in full agreement with it, and for the reasons he gives I would allow the Commissioners’ appeal and dismiss the respondent’s application for judicial review. LORD CARSWELL My Lords, 3. The appellants in this appeal are the Life Sentence Review Commissioners (“the Commissioners”), who have a number of functions under the Life Sentences (Northern Ireland) Order 2001 (“the 2001 Order”) in relation to prisoners in Northern Ireland sentenced to imprisonment for life. Their major task is to decide whethe...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Jun-11-2008
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
Decided on : Jun-18-2008
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
Decided on : Jun-18-2008
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...
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