Some people may think that once you have obtained patent protection for your product, you need do nothing further to protect your rights against infringement or to claim damages from an infringer. However, in many jurisdictions, merely being the owner…
When compromise fails, waging a war of attrition by litigation can often prove to be a disaster, as a recent Court of Appeal decision has underlined. After engaging in lengthy litigation over the division of their assets and the care…
A couple’s assets on divorce can include matrimonial property – i.e. assets acquired during the course of the marriage – and non-matrimonial property, which is commonly defined as property acquired before the relationship began or property that was inherited by…
Two care home managers are to have their cases reheard by the Employment Tribunal (ET) after the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) ruled that not every piece of information held by an employer is confidential and it is not necessarily gross…
The Court of Appeal has said that there will be more missed deadlines in employment cases unless litigants seek legal advice and representation (O’Cathail v Transport for London). After a delay of one day in submitting documents to the Employment…
A gay man who agreed to father a child with a lesbian woman has been ordered by the Child Support Agency (CSA) to pay thousands of pounds in child maintenance. The man befriended a lesbian couple who wished to have…
When a couple heeded the advice of their mortgage adviser and put the property they bought together into only one of their names, an eventual dispute over who owned what was always a possibility. The man paid all of the…
A recent case involving supermarket chain Somerfield (now part of the Co-Op) shows the wisdom of thinking through the implications of a contract before undertaking it. The supermarket chain made an agreement with a company called ParkingEye to monitor cars…
Trading with the intent to defraud creditors is an offence under the Insolvency Act 1986 (Section 213). Proceedings can be brought against the directors (including ‘shadow directors’ – people who run the company but are not formally directors) of an…
When a mother was informed that an allegation of serious sexual abuse had been made regarding her former husband, she went to court to have his rights to contact with their children restricted. The complaint against the man was made…
