Latest Cases

Fish – Salmon and trout. The defendant Environment Agency (the Agency) was ordered to pay the first claimant £187, 278 in compensation, following an earlier finding that its decisions to impose conditions on his licence to fish for salmon in the river Severn using a putcher rank, limiting his permitted catch, were each unlawful in the absence of compensation, by reason of their interference with his right to property under art 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Administrative Court further refused the second claimant permission to proceed with his separate claim against the Agency, holding that, while he was entitled to put forward a claim as a joint holder of the property right infringed, the Agency could not justly be required to pay twice over and the claimants could not both claim the whole loss.

Insolvency – Petition. The applicant company's application for a bankruptcy petition succeeded. The Chancery Division dismissed the opposing creditor's application for a second adjournment to consider an IVA. The court made an order on the petition.

Income tax – Penalty. The taxpayer's appeal against penalites imposed on him by the Revenue and Customs Commissioners (HMRC) for the late filing of individual tax returns pursuant to Sch 55 to the Finance Act 2009 was dismissed by the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber)(the FTT). On appeal, the Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) dismissed the taxpayer's appeal. The tribunal decided that: (i) on the balance of probabilities, notices to file had been sent to the taxpayer in respect of each of the tax years in question; and (ii) the taxpayer's contention that it had been disproportionate to impose those penalties in circumstances where no tax had been due did not amount to a special circumstance for the purposes of para 16 of Sch 55 to that Act.

Judgment – Enforcement. The wording of Sch 12 to the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 preserved the long established principle that a debtor's goods became bound by a writ from a particular point in time, and that it was only once the first writ was satisfied out of proceeds that the surplus (if any) could be applied to the second writ, in accordance with writ priority. The Queen's Bench Division so ruled in a dispute between two creditors (365 and Alvini) over which of them was entitled to the benefit of a payment of £12,050 which the debtor had made to an enforcement agent of Court Enforcement Services (CES), in relation to the Alvini debt, in circumstances where the writ of control concerning the 365 debt had been received by its enforcement agent first in time, and where 365 had deferred further action, and had been expecting its first instalment, under an agreement made with the debtor. The court dismissed CES's application to set aside a master's order, requiring it to pay over the money it had collected from the debtor to 365's enforcement agents. It held that priorities were established by the writs and their date of receipt, irrespective of the identities of the Hight Court Enforcement Officers in any given set of circumstances.

Town and country planning – Permission for development. The decisions in both cases to grant planning permission were affected by an error of law related to the failure to undertake appropriate assessment. However, the Administrative Court held that the decision would inevitably have been the same in the first case, but that test was not passed in second case and, therefore, in that latter case the defendant Secretary of State's decision to grant planning permission had to be quashed.

Bankruptcy – Order. The applicant's application to annul a bankruptcy order made against him failed. The Chancery Division held that the applicant's conduct demonstrated a wholesale disregard for the orders of the Court and the procedures that it had in place for dealing with cases justly and at proportionate cost. Further, it was not appropriate to stay the application pending payment of outstanding costs liabilities in circumstances where the source of funds remained unknown and there was a real question as to whether they were monies within the bankruptcy estate.

Restraint of trade by agreement – Contract. The claimant company's application for an interim injunction to prevent the defendants working for another company prior to trial failed. The Queen's Bench Division held that the reach of a convenant in the defendants' contracts ought to be taken to be worldwide, and that the evidence did not come close to demonstrating that, at the time when the contracts of employment for the defendants had been entered into, having regard to the contractual provisions as a whole and to the factual matrix to which the contract would reasonably have been expected to apply, the claimant had required the defendants to be shut out entirely from working in the foreign exchange markets, anywhere in the world, for a further period of five months (having served one month on 'garden leave') so as to protect its business interests.

Costs – Order for costs. In deciding what order to make about costs in the case of a Norwich Pharmacal order, he judge had adopted the wrong starting point and according the cost order made would be set aside. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, exercised its discretion to make no order for costs and restated the principles of costs on Norwich Pharmacal application.

Damages – Personal injury. The claimant was entitled to damages of £79,755, as there was little difficulty in concluding that she had established, on the balance of probabilities, that she had been the subject of five further occasions of abuse by the defendant, in addition to two occasions for which he had been convicted of sexual abuse. The Queen's Bench Division awarded £10,000 as aggravated damages, and special damages of £10,530 for therapy and travelling costs.

Value added tax – Input tax. The provision of the cars by the taxpayer NHS Trust to its employees under a salary sacrifice scheme (the car scheme) could not be regarded as a supply of services because it had been de-supplied by the Value Added Tax (Treatment of Transactions) Order 1992, SI 1992/630. It followed that the leasing of the cars by the Trust could not be an economic activity because that required a supply of services. However, pursuant to s 41(3) of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and para 3 of the Contracted Out Services Direction, the four-year limit imposed by the Revenue and Customs Commissioners was reasonable. Consequently, the Upper Tribunal (Tax Chamber) allowed the Trust's claim for recovery of all of the VAT incurred in relation to the car scheme but limited the claim to the period from 1 October 2012 to 31 January 2017.