A London couple who ran a guest house together have had the ownership of their assets decided after an acrimonious court case. They had been together since the early 1990s and had a son. In 1996, the male partner bought…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that United Kingdom legislation is deficient as it does not protect employees, including those with less than one year’s service, from dismissal on grounds of political opinion or affiliation (Redfearn v…
In the light of a recent Court of Appeal decision, businesses should ensure their employees are fully aware of the potentially serious consequences connected with discrimination and harassment in the workplace. The decision confirmed that joint and several liability is…
The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd £250,000 for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. In April 2011, the Sony Playstation Network Platform was hacked and the attacker was able to access the…
A dispute between two landowners that lasted several years seems to have finally ended, with one of them being fined for failing to comply with a court order. The two neighbours had been in a long-term dispute about the right…
A company director who lured customers away from his former employer after he had resigned from his post has been ordered to pay £50,000 in damages for breach of a non-solicitation clause in his employment contract. The defendant was employed…
The High Court has confirmed that residential landlords need to take a genuine approach to improvement works if they hope to pass costs on to their tenants. The court held that qualifying works under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985…
An Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision confirms that a business must conduct a thorough investigation before dismissing an employee, especially where the employee's integrity is in question, as a higher level of investigation may be required to establish their guilt…
Franchisors will welcome a High Court decision that applied established employment law principles on restrictive covenants to a business to business relationship. The court enforced an ambiguously drafted restrictive covenant against an ex-franchisee and also dismissed an argument that a…
A ‘worker’ who acts as a ‘whistleblower’ – disclosing breaches of the law – receives statutory protection under the law if he or she suffers detrimental treatment as a result of having made the disclosure to the appropriate authorities. Recently,…
