Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Apr-09-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. The appellants are the mothers of two young men, both aged 19, who lost their lives while serving in the British army in Iraq. Fusilier Gordon Campbell Gentle was serving with the 1st Battalion The Royal Highland Fusiliers when he was killed by a roadside bomb on 28 June 2004. Trooper David Jeffrey Clarke was serving with the Queen’s Royal Lancers when he was killed by “friendly fire” on 25 March 2003. These deaths have been fully investigated at duly-constituted inquests conducted in the United Kingdom, and there are no outstanding questions about when, where and in what circumstances they respectively died. 2. The appellants contend that by virtue of sections 1 and 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights they have an enforceable legal right sounding in domestic law to require Her Majesty’s Government to establish an independent public enquiry into all the circumstances surrou...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Jun-25-2008
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 ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Jan-30-2008
LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. Mr Duffy, the appellant, is a member of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition. He applied for judicial review to challenge the appointment by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 30 November 2005 of two new members of the Parades Commission for Northern Ireland. Those members are Mr David Burrows and Mr Donald Mackay (who has since resigned from the commission). Mr Duffy’s challenge was based on a number of grounds directed to the suitability of Mr Burrows and Mr Mackay to be members of the commission and to the process leading to their appointment. His challenge was upheld, on a limited ground, by Morgan J but was rejected by a majority of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland (Kerr LCJ and Campbell LJ, Nicholson LJ dissenting) in the judgment now under appeal ([2006] NICA 28, [2007] NI 12). Background 2. The holding of public parades, processions and marches has long been cherished by adherents of both the main traditions...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Dec-10-2008
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
Decided on : Nov-26-2008
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
Decided on : Jul-02-2008
LORD HOFFMANN My Lords, 1. In 2003 the pursuer Mr Spencer-Franks was employed as a mechanical technician by Kellogg Brown and Root Ltd (“KBR”), then a subsidiary of Halliburton, the multi-national company based in Texas which, among other things, supplies services to the offshore oil industry. KBR contracted to supply workers to operate the Tartan Alpha platform in the Scottish sector of the North Sea, which was operated by Talisman Energy (UK) Ltd (“Talisman”), a subsidiary of a Canadian oil company. The pursuer was one of the workers which KBR supplied to work on the platform. 2. On 12 October 2003 the closer on the door of the central control room was not working properly and the appellant was asked to inspect and repair it. The closer consists of a spring mechanism attached to the door and connected by a linkage arm to the door frame. According to the pursuer’s averments, which must for the purposes of this appeal be taken as true, he decided to remove...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Decided on : Nov-07-2008
Reported in : AIR2009SC581; (2009)1SCC482
Arijit Pasayat, J.1. Leave granted.2. Challenge in this appeal is to the Judgment of a learned Single Judge of the Allahabad High Court dismissing the application filed by the appellant for suspension of sentence and grant of bail. Appellant-Ratan Kumar Vishwas has filed an Appeal No. 6636 of 2006 questioning his conviction the offence punishable under Sections 27A and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (in short `the Act'). He was sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for 14 years and to pay a fine of rupees two lacs with default stipulation. Learned Additional Sessions Judge, Fast Track Court No. 1, Kanpur Nagar has found the appellant guilty and convicted and sentenced him as aforesaid.3. Brief facts of the case as projected by prosecution are that a secret and reliable information on 5.3.2004 was received by the complainant an officer of the N.C.B., Varanasi that huge quantity of Charas was being brought from Nepal to Kanpur in Truck No. UHN 9137 an...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Kolkata
Decided on : Jan-24-2008
Reported in : 2008(2)CHN396
Subhro Kamal Mukherjee, J.1. This is an appeal by an unsuccessful plaintiff against Order No. 6 dated July 6, 2006 passed by the learned Civil Judge (Senior Division), Siliguri, in a suit for partition and for recovery of possession.2. The plaintiff/appellant instituted Title Suit No. 18 of 2006, inter alia, seeking a preliminary decree for partition declaring plaintiff's share of .08 decimals of land described in the schedule 'B' to the plaint, final decree for partition and separate possession according to the report of the partition commissioner, recovery of possession in respect of .05 decimals in R.S. Plot No. 406 as described in schedule 'C' to the plaint.3. It is alleged in the plaint that Kharga Bahadur Gurung, the father of the plaintiff, and Madhumaya Gurung, the grandmother of the plaintiff, were the recorded owners of the land appertaining to Revenue Settlement Khatian No. 413 of mouza Siliguri in the district of Darjeeling. They had 5 annas and 2 gandas shares each in the ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Oct-22-2008
LORD HOPE OF CRAIGHEAD My Lords, 1. After the conclusion of the hearing, and following deliberation, the parties were informed that the appeal would be allowed for reasons to be given later. The following are my reasons for inviting the House to allow the appeal, to set aside the orders below and to quash the Secretary of State’s decision that the appellant and her son must be returned to Lebanon. 2. The case for allowing the appellant and her son to remain in this country on humanitarian grounds is compelling. That is shown by the facts that my noble and learned friend Lord Bingham of Cornhill has described. But the appellant does not wish to rely on the Secretary of State’s discretion. She claims that she has a right to remain here under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights read in conjunction with article 14. So the question is whether she has established that she and her son would run a real risk of a flagrant denial of the right to respect for their fam...
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
Decided on : Dec-10-2008
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...
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