A recent Court of Appeal judgment, dealing with a situation where a party has suspended or delayed compliance with its contractual obligations, is likely to be of interest to many businesses. The economic downturn has made this scenario increasingly common…
The ECJ has ruled that an employer's redundancy selection exercise must not discriminate against workers who have taken parental leave. In this case, the employer used selection criteria from a recent appraisal process, which the employee had not participated in…
Advances in technology, resulting from digitalisation of communications, have now made it possible for businesses to utilise small spaces in property for commercial purposes. The High Court has recently held that a tenant, which had taken a lease for 43…
In 2012/13, the number of monetary penalties imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations (SI 2011/1208) more than doubled, reaching 23…
An employment tribunal has decided that a law firm's mandatory retirement age of 65 for partners was a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims of workforce planning and staff retention. Therefore, the retirement age was objectively justified and did…
Businesses that sell directly to consumers should be made aware of a Court of Appeal decision which held that a "commercial practice" can refer to a single act or incident, as well as repeated conduct. This case involved the supply…
It is quite common when a subsidiary of a group of companies wishes to undertake a substantial contract for the other side to seek assurances of support from the subsidiary’s holding company, or occasionally from another member of the group…
In a ruling which underlines the potential hazards of signing personal guarantees in respect of corporate debts, a businessman has been hit with a bill for more than £330,000 almost seven years after he resigned from the relevant company. The…
Coffee-making machines using disposable ‘capsules’ of raw ingredients are becoming increasingly popular, so a row between two manufacturers of such systems was always on the cards. In the dispute, Nestec (a subsidiary of Nestlé) claimed that a rival system, manufactured…
When a building contract for a block of flats went wrong, leaving the new building with many defects, an architect who had no contract with the owners of the flats found himself in the firing line. When the block of…
