The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 may lead to considerable forced change in a contract. In some cases a contract term can be rendered automatically ineffective and in others a term can become ineffective unless it satisfies the requirement of reasonableness. Obviously the boundaries of such powerful provisions are of great significance and, for the most part, the sections which produce those effects are stated to apply to terms which ‘exclude or restrict liability.

There has been considerable litigation concerning the law of confidence in recent years. This includes claims brought by private individuals to restrain the disclosure of medical information and personal secrets, actions by employers against employees to restrain unauthorised use of trade secrets and actions by the government in respect of state secrets. Unfortunately, although the existence of a jurisdiction to restrain breaches of confidence has long been established, there still remains some uncertainty as to the conceptual basis of the action. The conceptual uncertainty has not, however, prevented the courts from recognising the existence of the jurisdiction and establishing the basic criterion of the action.

The recent refusal by the Appeal Committee of the House of Lords to grant leave to appeal to their Lordships' House in the case of Agip (Africa) Ltd v Jackson means that an opportunity has been lost to clarify the law with regard to the liability of a third party who helps a fiduciary commit a breach of trust. The difficulty is further compounded when one bears in mind that the ultimate appeal in Lipkin Goman v Karpnale did not involve one of the original defendants, Lloyds Bank, whose liability for enabling the gambling-addicted solicitor to sustain his predilection by cashing cheques for him was considered only by Alliott J and the Court of Appeal.

In leases it is not uncommon to make provision for periodic reviews of the rent and to impose on a lessor, who wishes to take advantage of such a provision, the necessity of his initiating, or ‘triggering’, the review by a notice served on the lessee at or before a certain date or within a certain period. In this article, we respectfully submit the House of Lords to have mistaken the nature of such impositions; and that it is because, and only because, of that mistake that the House has held such time limits to be, in the absence of the grossest indications to the contrary, merely ‘directory’ and so freely to be disregarded by lessors.

The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of two recent decisions on an immigrant’s right of appeal: Secretary of State for the Home Department v Sonia Mahli was decided in the Court of Appeal in December 1989 and R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex p Oladehinde was decided by the House of Lords in October 1990. Both cases raised other substantive issues of considerable importance for public lawyers: Oldehinde made the important point that the Secretary of State for the Home Department could delegate to senior immigration officers his powers to make deportation decisions; Malhi demonstrated how limited are the natural justice rights of overstayers.