Monthly Archive for August, 2007

Don't put our client on the stand

By NL on 29/08/2007. 0 Comments

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Brief to Counsel to the tune of Noel Coward’s
Don’t put your daughter on the stage

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Don’t put our client on the stand Mr Worthington,
Don’t put our client on the stand.

The possession claim is issued
The situation’s rough
And admitting the debt
And illegal sub-let
Really isn’t quite enough

He has no sense
That to neighbours a respect is due
And don’t you think his manner too
Uncertain to be planned?
We repeat Mr Worthington,
And plead, Mr Worthington
Don’t put our client on the stand

Re your advice, sage Mr Worthington
Of Wednesday the 23rd
Although our client may be
Keen on his day in … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , .

The summer of dodgy lawyers continues.

By NL on 26/08/2007. 0 Comments

An extraordinary tale in today’s Observer.

Bruce Hyman, a practising barrister, has pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice. The full story is at the link, but what apparently happened was that Hyman, representing a client in a family case (over access rights), went to a Tottenham Court Road computer shop and emailed a bogus judgment to the other side – the father, appearing in person. The email purported to be from Families Need Fathers and the judgment apparently supportive of the father’s case.

The father naturally presented the judgment at the Court hearing, at which point Hyman pounced, suggesting the father was responsible for forging the … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , , .

Moral Idiocy and Human Rights

By NL on 25/08/2007. 0 Comments

Clear good sense on human rights and the Chiandamo affair in the Daily Telegraph of all places. (My own earlier take is here). Thanks to Tim Worstall for the link.… Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , , .

We few(er)…

By NL on 23/08/2007. 15 Comments

I was running through my blawg roll (on the right) earlier and realised I’d have to have a bit of a prune. Anything with no posts since May goes out, I thought.

Courtesy of of Beauteous Babe, Flickr.Blimey, a few surprises there. I’d put some silences down to it (technically) being summer, but it seems that there has been a self induced purge. So, a quick taxonomy of the disparu et perdu (with examples but without links for obvious reasons):

Ran out of vim – just stopped posting for no apparent reason and without so much as a goodbye, leaving a ghost blawg.

Croslandite Barrister, James Medhurst, Outside the Law, Terminological Inexactitudes [Edit 26/08/07 –

… Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: .

Human Rights – once more with feeling

By NL on 22/08/2007. 0 Comments

Another day, another case, another set of screaming tabloid headlines accusing the Human Rights Act of being the criminal’s charter, another promise from Little Lord Fauntleroy to ‘repeal the Human Rights Act and bring in a British bill of rights’.

The whole frenzy around the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s decision in respect of the post-sentence deportation of Learco Chindamo, who murdered the teacher Philip Lawrence, is all too familiar, and the whole pack are now so busy feeding off their self-created myths that it is probably futile to try to raise some facts and reason in response. Nevertheless, I shall try.

First because easiest, Cameron’s promise to abolish the HRA. … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , .

It's always the conveyancers you have to watch…

By NL on 20/08/2007. 0 Comments

Not content with passing off ‘he was discussing insurance in my office’ as an alibi for an alleged offence of abduction and extortion by a client in 2005, Shahid Pervez, a Scottish ex-conveyancer now convicted of perverting the course of justice, also fell foul of the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal in the same year for ‘accounting malpractice and not registering title deeds timeously’. He was struck off the roll for ten years. It was probably lucky for the alleged offender that he wasn’t actually arranging insurance.

And, in passing, it also appears we have a new offence of demanding money with masturbatory aids. Tell me, is that a … Read the full post

Posted in Various (non-housing). Tags: , .

Public funding and rent payable

By NL on 18/08/2007. 0 Comments

I meant to post about this one a month ago but got sidetracked. A case for any civil legal aid people to note.

Funding Certificates are means-tested. Funding issued by practioners under devloved powers can be and is yanked by the Legal Services Commission if they later calculate the client as outside the eligible range. Unsurprisingly, this gives rise to quite a few disputes.

Rent is taken into account in the means test. Relatively recently, the LSC, in its wisdom, decided that the rent figure was rent actually paid, not rent payable. This produced the glorious result of people facing possession proceedings for rent arrears not getting funding to … Read the full post

Posted in FLW case note, Housing law - All, Possession and Tolerated trespasser. Tags: , , , .
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