Legal News Articles
Partners in LLPs with fixed shares cannot be considered as workers for claiming protection (28 September 2012)
In a case of protection to workers under certain employment legislation the Court of Appeal had decided that members with fixed-shares in a Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP) cannot obtain protection as ‘workers’.
In Clyde & Co LLP and another v Bates van Winkelhof [2012] EWCA Civ 1207, it held that fixed-share partners cannot be treated as workers and therefore are not protected as whistleblowers under Section 47B of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
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A murderer and rapist has been given 23 life terms for crimes linked to him (28 September 2012)
A murderer and rapist Kenneth Shirley, 42, has been given a total of 23 life terms for the nature of his offences and the murder and rape convictions.
He had been convicted of crimes which were similar and had a ‘peculiar hallmark’ to all of them.
His latest crime was when he tied a woman to her bed gagged her and attacked her with a knife and other objects leaving the woman so traumatised by the attack in December 2005 that she was unable to tell the police until last year.
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First squatter convicted and sentenced for 12 weeks (28 September 2012)
The dubious distinction of being the first man to be sentenced for squatting has gone to Alex Haigh, a 21 year old man who had come to London seeking work and had occupied a flat without permission.
Haigh originally from Plymouth was arrested at a flat in Pimlico, central London, under the government’s anti-squatting legislation and was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison after pleading guilty to occupying a housing association flat without permission.
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Poles are coming into UK despite strong economy in their home country and recession in the UK (28 September 2012)
For the first time after the financial crash, official figures have shown a rise in the number of Polish workers migrating to Britain seeking employment, attracted by the higher salaries in the UK.
Despite the fact that the UK was under the grip of a recession there were record numbers of people from the east European country settling in Britain last year. The official figures have shown about 45,000 people having settled down in Britain last year.
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Liberalising IFA referrals would risk Solicitors who would be vulnerable to negligence claims (25 September 2012)
Negligence claims could put solicitors in vulnerable position if clients were referred to financial advisers who are not wholly independent the Law Society has warned.
Following the consultation on financial advice by Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) the Society responded by pointing out the danger of actions alleging poor advice arising from such a referral.
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Abu Hamza and four others to be extradited to the US for trial (25 September 2012)
The European court of human rights has cleared the path for the extradition of Abu Hamza al-Masri and Babar Ahmad, after legal battles which lasted over eight years.
The decision was immediately welcomed by the home secretary, Theresa May, who said the Home Office would work to hand over the five to the US authorities as quickly as possible.
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A joint enterprise convict jailed for 33 years even though he didn’t fire a shot (25 September 2012)
In a gang related shootout on the morning of 14 October 2006, around midnight, there was shooting in an Albanian/Kosovan club in Park Royal, North West London. One man Prel Marku, died from gun shot wound to his head while two others were wounded.
The war was over the right to rob the parking metres of the West End.
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Mortgage fraudster jailed for two years (24 September 2012)
A solicitor who had been working with an estate agent has been jailed for two years for her involvement in a £1.3m mortgage fraud. She has been also ordered to repay £108,405 within 12 months or serve an additional two years.
The 35, year old, mother of two, Elena Quinlivan, who was a criminal defence lawyer, planned to build a rental property empire using forged identity documents, bank statements and payslips which showed her having huge blown up income.
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Mother via surrogacy claims maternity pay at the High Court (24 September 2012)
A woman who had a child using a surrogate mother has taken the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, to the High Court for right to get maternity pay claiming that her human rights were being breached.
The woman, from Kent, says that even though she did not give birth to her son she is entitled to paid leave to look after and bond with him.
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A person involved in nationwide paedophile ring jailed for 10 years (24 September 2012)
A man who was part of a nationwide paedophile ring has been jailed for ten years after he was caught by a undercover policeman while trying to sell his ten year daughter for sex in a London hotel.
Anthony Flack, 54, a bank manager had arranged to meet a man and his ten year old daughter for sex in a London hotel but Flack of Windrush Road, was arrested when the supposed paedophile behind his sick fantasy turned out to be an undercover police officer called ‘Dave’.
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A re-offending paedophile sent to prison after offending immediately on his release (21 September 2012)
A paedophile internet stalker has been jailed after he was found harassing his girlfriend but within days of his release he started preying on two schoolgirls and has been sent behind bars again.
Shane Webber had subjected his childhood sweetheart Ruth Jeffery to a humiliating three-year trolling campaign, using social networking sites to send naked pictures of her to her friends and family, including her horrified parents.
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A pregnant teacher awarded compensation for unfair dismissal (21 September 2012)
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has won unfair dismissal case of a pregnant school teacher at the Shrewsbury employment tribunal on May 23.
The school involved was Independent girls^ school, Howell^s School in Denbigh, North Wales, who has been told to pay £33,923.27 to Rebecca Raven, a teacher they sacked when she became pregnant.
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Kent council says asylum seeking children would be kept in lock and key for their own good (21 September 2012)
Social services chiefs have said that child asylum seekers could be put under lock and key to stop them from falling into the hands of criminla gangs and child traffickers.
A scheme is being considered by the Kent County Council that would involve vulnerable children arriving in the county being placed in a specialised care home on a short term basis to prevent them going missing.
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A con artist removed locks of a house belonging to housing association and rented it to a gullible family (20 September 2012)
A scam landlord broke into a house and rented the house to a Romanian family for £1,000 after carrying an advertisement for the same.
The con artist changes the locks of the home in Clay Lane, Stoke, Coventry, before putting a ‘for let’ notice in the window.
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A beauty salon fined £40,000 for breach of fire safety precaution (20 September 2012)
Celebrity hairdresser Daniel Hersheson was ordered to pay £40,000 in fines and costs after his West End hair salon was found guilty of breaching fire safety laws.
In a fire incident at the salon in Conduit Street, London in May 2009 a member of staff was badly burnt when candles in the shop, which were being used to create atmosphere, lit her skirt. Prosecution followed.
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Some asylum seeker have been taken off the flight in a last minute court intervention (20 September 2012)
A last minute injunction saved dozens of failed Sri Lankan asylum seekers from being deported at the last minute from a controversial deportation flight. A senior judge had accepted that there was a risk of the deportees being subjected to torture on their return.
The government has insisted on continuing with its policy of chartered deportation flights to Sri Lanka even though twice the judiciary had issued last minute injunctions because of concerns over torture.
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Police campaign Operation Harvest to tackle serious kind of crime (18 September 2012)
A police campaign has started on Monday with the M.E.N. publishing the photos and details of GMP’s 36 most wanted criminals out of which four have been arrested.
Under the name Operation Harvest, the campaign was designed to tackle the kind of crime that causes the public the most concern, the police have said.
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Migrants have helped soar the birth rate in Britain says National Statistics figure (18 September 2012)
Britain’s birth rate has been pushed to one of the highest in Europe because of migrants, says a figure released by the EU’s statistical arm Eurostat.
The average birth rate in Britain has crossed ahead of those in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Malta, Holland and Finland by 2010 at an average of 1.98 children per woman. All six countries had higher birth rates than the UK in 2000.
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Renting is more expensive than owning a similar property says bank (17 September 2012)
If one wanted to save for buying a house it was but logical that one stayed in a rented accommodation but not anymore.
A major report has said that mortgaging a three bedroom house was far cheaper than taking the house for rent.
On average, a homeowner was spending around £130 per month less than an average tenant who was renting an identical property, according to Halifax.
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Thirteen years all it takes to apprehend an illegal immigrant (17 September 2012)
It took thirteen years for the Border Agency to catch an illegal immigrant who was staying right under the radar after being smuggled into the UK in the back of a lorry before he was finally caught.
Sohan Dhillon had been in the UK long enough to have carved himself out a tax free job and earning thousands as a builder.
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Online banking scams has to be checked by overhauling banking system says victim of such scam (17 September 2012)
Alex Duke, 43, owner of Exit Interiors, Harrogate, who lost nearly £50,000 in an online scam which almost bankrupted her business before she could manage to get the money paid back, has called for an overhaul of the banking operating system to protect victims of fraud.
In May, a fraudster from the United Arab Emirates emailed an order for £5,200 of lighting.
Ms Duke say she receives a handful of orders from the Middle East every year but always treats them in the same way, circumspect, but proceed with caution and not do anything until payment has been received.
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Police officers of Hillsborough disaster have received 30 times more compensation than the families of victims (17 September 2012)
A damning report revealed a cover up in the Hillsborough disaster having taken place where the police shifted the blamed on to the victims and that half of the victims who lost their lives could have been saved.
The panel found 164 police statements were altered, 116 of them to remove or alter ^unfavourable^ comments about the policing of the match and the unfolding disaster.
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A campaign for reducing children in custody is being concluded after a successful stint (14 September 2012)
As the year comes to an end the campaign for reducing numbers of children in custody is also concluding it has been confirmed.
The Prison Reform Trust launched the Out of Trouble campaign in 2007 with £1.5m in funding from the The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, which itself closes in December.
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Child care advocacy found to be weak according to a report by a charity (14 September 2012)
The Children’s Society report analyses the benefits of independent advocacy for looked after children.
A report by The Children’s Society has revealed that a strong statutory guidance was needed to make sure that every child in the care system had the access to vital independent advocacy.
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The biggest banking fraud in Britain goes to trial (14 September 2012)
The biggest banking fraud has gone on trial today where a City trader who was suppose to have had a magic touch gambled away £1.4 billion.
Investment banker Kweku Adoboli, 32, allegedly invented fictitious accounts to conceal the massive losses he was making at Swiss bank UBS from risky deals.
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A woman raising family as a squatter is challenging the new squatters law. (13 September 2012)
Irene Gardiner, 49, who has raised her family at a 500 year old house is going to challenge the new squatting laws which criminalises squatting, claiming it was breach of her human rights.
After the law had become effective from 1 September 2012 Ms Gardiner a mother of four has been asked to leave the property. And she has plans to take her case to the High Court.
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Benefit fraud mother of four sent to jail for eight months (13 September 2012)
Alison Earney, 35, who cheated councils of more than £111,000 which she was not entitled to has been jailed for eight months.
She had claimed benefits as an unemployed single mother of four when in fact she was living with her husband and both were working.
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East European criminals lead the march in committing crimes by foreign born immigrants (13 September 2012)
Discovery by an investigation has found numbers of foreign nationals being detained by the West Midlands Police for crimes like robbery, burglary and theft have doubled in the period an increase of 53 percent.
It has become more acute to control these crimes as the country’s second biggest force the West Midlands was struggling to cope with the unprecedented cuts of £125million.
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A pathological rapist has been jailed for six years (13 September 2012)
Joseph Moran, 19, of Sneinton, Nottingham, who had raped a young woman who was thrown off her last bus home as she was 20p short of the fare, has been jailed for six years.
He had claimed that he had stumbled across the 23 year old victim and had helped her on the night of the attack last December.
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Huge penalty for not putting systems in order by investment advisers (12 September 2012)
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined a firm of investment advisers £9.5m for failing to protect client money adequately, even though none of its client had lost out.
BlackRock Investment Management (BIM) will have to pay £9,533,100 after not putting trust letters in place for certain money market deposits, and for failing to take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly in relation to the identification and protection of client money.
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The sentencing was not in proportion to money involved in growing cannabis says police chief (12 September 2012)
The police chief for Merseyside police has called for tough punishments for drug related trade which was driving up gang related violence.
Cultivation and selling of cannabis must be dealt with serious penalties as the surge in this trade was driving up shootings and gang related violence he warned.
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According to the Council of Europe report some children trafficked into the UK were going missing from local authority care. (12 September 2012)
The people were being brought into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation; there were indications to that effect the report by the Council said.
It raised concerns regarding the lack of secure and suitable accommodation for trafficked children who end up in local authorities care.
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A mother who went to work locking her toddler child in a flat has been spared jail (11 September 2012)
A mother of 20 month old toddler, who left the child unsupervised in a locked flat with nothing but a plate of crisps and a bottle of juice to feed herself, was let off with a suspended sentence. The judge declared that the child was well fed’.
She had locked the child and went to work.
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A child rapist has been spotted eight years later by the aunt of the victim (11 September 2012)
Kifueni Kadiabioko, 41, a child rapist who was roaming free for eight years after committing the crime was caught when the aunt of his victim spotted him on a train nearly eight years on.
The woman recognised Kadiabioko when he was chatting with friends on the train at London’s Euston station on February 12 this year.
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A benefit cheat has been spared jail as the judge felt it would cost more than he had swindled (11 September 2012)
A judge has spared a Somali benefits cheat from being sent to prison because the judge felt that locking him up for a year would be costing as much to the taxpayer as much he had swindled.
Karmal Mustafa had dishonestly claimed £38,856.50 of income support, council tax and housing benefit while working over a seven-year period to support two families.
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A child of British couple living in Portugal taken into emergency care after she was neglected by her parents (10 September 2012)
A two year old toddler, whose British parents living in Portugal were accused of drinking wine while the child was left to wander next to a road, has been put in an emergency centre for children while the Portuguese authorities are contemplating filing charges against the couple.
Colette McPartland, 38, and her partner Stephen Street, 42, were accused of neglecting their daughter Scarlett. But the couple had denied the allegations as false.
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With emergency staff gone the airline passengers would face longer queues in the coming days says managers (10 September 2012)
The extra emergency guards from the Ministry of Defence who were drafted to help tackle the Olympics rush are due to leave the Heathrow at the end of the month and the pre Olympics staffing issue seems to come to haunt the immigration desks as managers at Heathrow have warned of huge delays for airlines passengers in the coming weeks due to immigration staff shortages.
Passengers had to face queues with waits of up to four hours to get through passport control at Britain^s busiest airport at the beginning of summer because of the same staffing issue.
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A bank forced to apologise and compensate a customer who was insulted by the staff member (10 September 2012)
A local Halifax employee’s comments at a Redhead have led the bank to pay the customer compensation with apologies.
Laura Payton, 32, was insulted by the member of staff for being ginger and was stunned when the worker quipped that Laura’s daughter must be glad that she was not ginger like her mother.
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A fraudster posing as an immigration advisor has been jailed for 5 years (6 September 2012)
A London based Indian national Bhavin Shah, 34, has been jailed for almost five years after pleading guilty to conspiring to defraud the Home Office while posing as a UK immigration advisor.
Shah, operated businesses from Wembley and Alperton where he was charging as much as £5,000 to process UK visa applications and extensions, despite not being a registered immigration adviser.
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A couple arrested for shooting burglars would not face any charges. (6 September 2012)
The couple who was arrested for shooting burglars who broke into their isolated cottage was dropped of all charges after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced last night that that the Ferries had acted within the law, which allows people to use reasonable force to protect themselves, their family or their property.
Initially they were arrested and kept under custody for two days which was condemned by the rural community.
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Millionaire business man’s will leaves £12 million French villa to his mistress (6 September 2012)
Bernard Mathew, whose Turkey empire had amassed him a fortune of £40 million had asked his three children Kathleen, Jason and Victoria not to contest his wishes and allow Villa Bolinha, in Ramatuelle, to go to his lover Odile Marteyn despite the fact that according to French laws seventy five per cent of his Mediterranean property would have gone to his children on his death.
The successful British businessman had left his £12 million Saint Tropez villa solely to his secret French mistress.
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Campaign to bring some hardcore criminals back to UK for facing justice has been set to launch (5 September 2012)
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) is set to launch a campaign to track down some of the UK’s most wanted fugitives believed to be hiding in Cyprus.
For a start a list of eight men and one woman was compiled by the Crimestoppers charity, the Soca and the Cypriot authorities.
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Financial sector had become irresponsible towards its customers says financial watchdog (5 September 2012)
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) UK’s financial watchdog would be calling for a tough stand later on commissions being paid for selling insurance, loans and bank accounts.
The move has come after a series of mis-selling scandals such as payment protection insurance (PPI). However the FSA was unlikely to impose an outright ban on commissions.
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The university revoked of its sponsorship status for foreign students is going for legal discourse (4 September 2012)
The London Metropolitan University has said that it was going to challenge the UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) decision to revoke its license of sponsoring overseas students.
UKBA had stripped the University of its Sponsorship Rights after it found that more than a quarter of a sample of the university’s students did not have permission to stay in the country.
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First case under new squatter’s law registered by Sussex police (4 September 2012)
The first case of squatting under the new legislation making it a criminal offence has been put to test by the police when three men were arrested on Monday after the police raided a property in Brighton.
Sussex police removed barricades and entered the building in London Road after the deadline set by the owner had expired for suspected squatters to vacate the premises.
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A couple were arrested for grievous bodily harm against two suspected intruders (3 September 2012)
Two men suspected to be burglars were shot at a remote house in Leicestershire and the homeowner has been arrested for the shooting.
The 35, year old man and his 43, year old wife were supposed to have been disturbed by the break-in in the Welby area, near Melton Mowbray, in the early hours of Sunday.
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Public inquiry to reconvene on police shooting of Azelle Rodney after seven years (3 September 2012)
A public inquiry is to be reconvened later into the death of a west London man who was shot by a police officer in 2005.
Azelle Rodney, 24, from Hounslow, was shot dead by a marksman who opened fire when Rodney was in the back of a car in Edgware, north London.
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Do the US and British have an ‘inhibited persons list’ to manage a secret database? (3 September 2012)
An Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson acting for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was left stunned when she was stopped at the Heathrow and told that she was on a secret watch list and required special clearance before she could board her plane to fly home.
Ms Robinson said she was shocked after being told by an airline crew that she was on an ‘inhibited person list’ which meant that she must have ‘done something controversial’.
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A TV Game show winner spent all his money so as to avoid a share to his estranged wife (3 September 2012)
A, 33 year old sign manufacturer who won £50,000 on Deal Or No Deal show had spent all the money before his estranged wife could claim any of it.
Scott Brown who won the money on the TV game show had only four months before the show was screened and his wife came to know of the windfall. So he decided to spend it fast.
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The number of teenagers being convicted by courts over sexual offences against a child has recorded a high. (3 September 2012)
It has emerged that every day a teenager on an average is being convicted for the crime. Last year 357 youngsters under 18 were found guilty of offences ranging from rape of another child, sexual grooming and taking or possessing indecent photographs of minors.
It’s more shocking that more than 40 per cent of the youngsters convicted last year were aged between 10 and 15.
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