Having been promised 15% per annum returns on their investments, hundreds of investors paid a total of over £6m to Mr. Prentis’ firm of solicitors, to be invested in short term, high interest mortgages. The payments were held on trust in a client account pending investment. Only some of the payments received were in fact invested in mortgages. For those that were, the documentation was woefully inadequate; frequently it did not identify which investor's money had been applied towards each mortgage or in what amount. There were substantial shortfalls, both in capital and in income. The Law Society intervened and Mr. Prentis was struck off, preventing the firm from continuing to act as trustee. In Russell-Cooke Trust Co. v. Prentis [2002] EWHC 2227 (Ch), [2003] 2 All E.R. 478 the replacement trustee sought directions as to how it should distribute between the various investors the investments which had been made and the surplus funds remaining in the client account.

IN a previous article it was contended that for the purpose of the conflict of laws the structure of immaterial property law (which term is used here to include patents and the like) is exceptional. Due to its privileged character accorded by the sovereign local authority it is territorial in the dual sense that such laws are strictly confined in their operation to their country of origin and that within that territory the application of foreign immaterial property law is excluded by its inherent limitation. In English and Commonwealth law this insight was concealed until recently by the assertion that the courts could only exercise jurisdiction in respect of claims based on their own national intellectual property law. Jurisdiction was thus functionally linked to the exclusive sphere of the applicable law.

When Item Software was seeking to renegotiate an important contract with a client, its duplicitous sales director, Fassihi, sought to take the contract for himself. In conduct deserving of a “Janus award”, Fassihi disparaged the negotiating parties to each other, and encouraged the company to raise its price even as he made his own advances to the client. Ultimately, neither the company nor Fassihi got the contract. Item Software (UK) Ltd. v. Fassihi [2004] EWCA Civ 1244 concerns the company's claim, having dismissed Fassihi, for compensation for lost profits in relation to the contract.

Compensation, whether in the form of damages or equitable compensation, is only available where the loss is causally linked to the breach of duty: Target Holdings Ltd. v. Redferns [1996] A.C. 421, 432, 434.

One feature of the current debate concerning the term “public authority” in the Human Rights Act 1998 is a rule to the effect that public authorities are not themselves capable of having and enforcing Convention rights. In what follows this will be referred to as the “rights-restriction rule”. The position was confirmed by the House of Lords in Aston Cantlow and has been given effect by the courts in relation to English local authorities and to NHS Trusts in Scotland. Despite this, doubts have been expressed. In particular the parliamentary Joint Committee has suggested, though without argument, that the denial of Convention rights to public authorities may be wrong in principle and that there are “circumstances in which public authorities have Convention rights”.

On 19 December 2003, a Football Association (“FA”) disciplinary hearing found Rio Ferdinand, the Manchester United and England defender, guilty of failing to submit to drug testing, and imposed a fine of £50,000 and an eight-month playing ban. Alex Ferguson publicly attributed United's failure to win the 2003/04 Premiership title in part to the loss of his key defender. However, United's loss was not merely sporting: reports suggest that the cost of the club's decision to continue paying Ferdinand's wages in full during his eight months of inactivity was more than £2.4 million. Chelsea was far less supportive in October 2004 when its Romanian striker Adrian Mutu tested positive for cocaine: in addition to receiving a £20,000 fine and a seven-month playing ban from the FA, Mutu had his contract terminated by the club on the ground of gross misconduct.

An inaugural lecture is the occasion when the University of Cambridge can look its gift horse in the mouth, weighing the new professor in the balance against his or her distinguished predecessors. The Rouse Ball Professorship of English Law has been held in the past by a long series of distinguished scholars, from Sir Percy Winfield to my immediate predecessor, Sir Jack Beatson whom we are delighted to welcome back today. Their work has influenced generations of lawyers. They certainly influenced me. Before I encountered Criminal Law: The General Part, a great little volume by Professor Glanville Williams, Learning the Law, was my “Guide, Philosopher and Friend” (as it still says on the cover of the latest edition, now edited by my colleague Professor Tony Smith) as I approached the study of law. Another Rouse Ball Professor, the late Sir William Wade, had a formative effect on my understanding of land law and administrative law both through his famous books, Megarry and Wade on the Law of Real Property (now edited by a former Fellow of Downing College, Dr. Charles Harpum) and Administrative Law (now in the hands of my colleague Dr. Christopher Forsyth), not to mention the lectures that I attended as an undergraduate in (softly be it said) the University of Oxford.

In Three Rivers District Council v. Governor and Company of the Bank of England (No. 6) [2004] UKHL 48, [2004] 3 W.L.R. 1274 (“Three Rivers (No. 6)”) the House of Lords held that legal advice privilege is not restricted to advice about legal rights and liabilities but extends to “presentational advice”.

The claim for privilege arose in litigation following an inquiry into the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA (“BCCI”). The inquiry considered the manner in which the Bank of England (“the Bank”) discharged its statutory role to supervise financial institutions in particular. The Bank engaged Freshfields, and appointed officials within the Bank (the Bingham Inquiry Unit (“BIU”)) to co-ordinate communications with and submissions to the inquiry. Section 1(4) of the Banking Act 1987 relieves the Bank of any liability unless it discharged its obligations “in bad faith”.

The British monarch has legal duties to perform, as well as ceremonial and representative functions to discharge. For example, the monarch’s assent is legally required before a Bill or an Order in Council can pass into law; some appointments only take effect when they are formally approved by the monarch, which is sometimes signified by the Queen’s personal signature, the royal sign manual, or at others by personal delivery by the monarch of seals of office. Some types of document require as a matter of law the affixing of the Great Seal, which can usually be done only by virtue of a warrant under the royal sign manual: examples include royal proclamations (say to dissolve Parliament), or Letters Patent (say to confer a peerage or to ratify a treaty). Because the monarch is part of the legal machinery of government it is essential that the monarch is always available to function as such; but because a monarch is only human there will be times when, because of absence or illness, this is impossible.

PROTESTORS of many types have featured in recent news reports—including both those who would hunt animals and those who would save them. The devastating impact of the activities of animal rights protestors on research facilities in Cambridge and elsewhere is well known. One response has been to seek injunctive relief under section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (“the Act”). These claims allege that the defendants seek to achieve the objective of closing laboratories in which experimentation on live animals is conducted by a concerted campaign of unlawful harassment and intimidation directed at laboratories, their customers and suppliers and their employees.

Over the past 30 years, in a series of cases where one person has been in some way involved in the death of another from a drugs overdose, the courts have struggled to explain the basis on which the first person should be guilty of manslaughter. Two connected issues have arisen: where, as is normally the case, D has been charged with unlawful act, or constructive, manslaughter, an unlawful act on D’s part has had to be identified; and a chain of causation between D’s act and the death has had to be established.

“Not only would it be a bold and brave judge … who would seek to interfere with the discretion of doctors acting under the Abortion Act 1967, but I think he would really be a foolish judge who would try to do any such thing, unless, possibly, where there is clear bad faith and an obvious attempt to perpetrate a criminal offence.” So said Sir George Baker P. in Paton v. B.P.A.S. and his view has been repeated at apposite judicial moments in subsequent cases. Recently, however, a legal attempt was indeed made to question the discretion of doctors in Jepson v. The Chief Constable of West Mercia Police Constabulary. Reverend Joanna Jepson asked the West Mercia Police to investigate doctors who had authorised an abortion for bilateral cleft lip and palate at 28 weeks under the disability ground of the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990). Abortion is legal under that section if two doctors have formed an opinion in good faith that “there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.