In a contractual dispute involving a written agreement, parties can face difficulties in proving the effect they originally intended particular words of the agreement to have, perhaps because the wording is ambiguous or fails to adequately express the intention of the contracting parties. In such circumstances, the court will analyse the agreement and the intention …
The Jackson reforms, effective from 1 April 2013, brought about a number of significant changes to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), perhaps the most fundamental of which was the amendment of the overriding objective at CPR 1.1(1). Prior to amendment, Rule 1.1(1) stated that the CPR were designed to enable the court to deal with …
People largely associate forum shopping in divorces with crossing foreign borders, rather than moving within the UK. The reality, however, is that the Scottish laws regulating financial provision upon divorce are very different from those in England. In many cases this difference has little impact on the eventual outcome. However, in 5-10% of cases the …
Continue reading “England v Scotland: the difference on divorce and cohabitation”
In the run up to the next general election on 7 May 2015, the UK government is implementing a raft of measures intended to reduce ‘illegal’ immigration in the UK. The latest of these measures is the Immigration Act 2014 (the Act), which received royal assent on 14 May 2014. The first element of this …
Continue reading “A review of the recent changes to UK immigration law and sponsorship”
In the words of Mark Twain, there are ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’. It does seem, however, that whichever way you look at the latest figures detailed in the Civil Law Statistics for Scotland for the year 2012/13, there is an ongoing trend for individuals and businesses to rely less upon the Scottish court system …
Continue reading “Is alternative dispute resolution taking centre stage?”
Today’s global economy presents both commercial opportunity and legal risk to producers. The vast majority of companies now trade on an international scale with design, manufacturing and distribution spanning the entire globe. However, international trade is not without risk where product liability is concerned. In this article, John Reynolds of Shook, Hardy & Bacon considers …
Continue reading “Sailing on the seven seas: international product liability perils ”
For a long time the issue of rent payable by a corporate tenant in administration appeared to be settled1. Landlords were apparently content to accept that, when a tenant company went into administration, the rent owing under the lease at the date of the administration was an ordinary unsecured claim. For the period of the …
Two new codes of practice for employers came into effect on 16 May 2014, relating to the prevention of illegal working and avoiding unlawful discrimination in the legal right to work checking process.
The widespread deployment of anaerobic digestion facilities is finally becoming a reality after many years of gradual but slow progress. Interest in gas to grid facilities has been a particular feature, prompted by the incentives available under the Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). This article explores the regulatory and contractual foundations behind the gas to …
Continue reading “The legal implications of gas to grid: a bio-methane revolution”
Many parties will require that certain aspects of a contract are to be performed in a timely manner. Indeed, written contracts will often include provisions that ‘time is of the essence’. The benefit of making time of essence is that this stipulation becomes a condition of the contract: if the performing party fails to perform …