Monthly Archive for December, 2007

To end the year – a meme


Thanks to Lex Scholasticus at Reductio ad Absurdum, I have been tagged with another blog meme thing. In a surprising bout of pre-new year generosity, I will both respond and entirely fail to tag anyone else.

I am called upon to list 8 things I want to happen in 2008. Only 8? I’ll try to keep them vaguely legally related, apart from the first, which is of pressing personal need, and the last, which is too much to hope for.

1. Cure the damn common cold. OK, I understand the nature of fast mutating viruses and why this is difficult. So couldn’t someone just come up with a symptom … Read the full post

Blawg Review Nominations

This year’s Blawg Review awards are apparently to be awarded to one Blawg on the basis of nominations from solely those who have hosted or are shortly to host a Blawg Review.

Having closely followed the instructions of the anonymous Ed of Blawg Review, Nearly Legal’s nominations are based on marks for elegance and commitment, with bonus points for being based some distance to the east of most of the Blawg Reviewers.

And the nominations are, in no particular order:

Corporate Law UK for Review #116

Public Defender Stuff for Review #91

Lex Ferenda for Review #128

and Infamy or Praise for Review #137

To date, nobody has nominated … Read the full post

RCJ evicts thousands…

From The Times, 12 November 1866

The extensive and complicated network of lanes, courts and alleys covering the area bounded east and west by Bell Yard and Clement’s Inn, north by Carey Street, and south by the Strand and Fleet Street, lately containing a population more numerous than that of many Parliamentary boroughs, is being fast deserted. A few of the winding thoroughfares are not yet disturbed, but several of old and worse than equivocal notoriety – and in which, a few weeks ago, passage was rendered somewhat difficult by the human swarms whose modes of existence are among the unsolved social mysteries – are now almost uninhabited, only a

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Omar update

Craig Keenan from Community Law Partnership has added another comment to my original post on Omar -v- Birmingham CC to the effect that funding may be forthcoming for a House of Lords appeal. Also the key issue, which is whether Councils can rely on s.193(5) – suitability – rather than s.193(7) – suitability and reasonable to accept – when discharging duty on refusal of an offer of accommodation, may well come up in other cases headed to the Court of Appeal.

Hopefully, a resolution will be achieved soon, as Omar -v- Birmingham was not at all clear in its suggestions.… Read the full post

Christmas rush

It seems I wasn’t the only one frantically getting cases progressed before the holiday break. The Court of Appeal has been churning out judgments at an extraordinary rate.

Amongst them one housing law judgment…

Green & Anor v London Borough of Croydon [2007] EWCA Civ 1367. This was an appeal on a homeless application. Briefly, there had been a somewhat iffy possession order, made where the actual rent due and owing was not clear at all. The Local Authority had even advised the appellants on the iffyness of the claim. However, a ground 8 possession order was made and the Council then returned an intentionally homeless s.184 decision on … Read the full post

amicitia reverto (sic)

So, Belle de Jure and Lawyer-2-be, although apparently tired of being respectively scandalously homophonic and hyphenated, are back. I somehow thought it was only a matter of time before one or both broke cover.

Now conjoined, although thankfully not declined, and newly latinate, their fresh venture, Reductio ad Absurdum, should be a blog for lawyers with a hinterland, always assuming there be such a thing.

For myself, I have no Latin, or indeed Classical Greek, the lack of which makes me neither proud nor ashamed. I could once, however, play the oboe and explain hermeneutics. Preferably not at the same time.… Read the full post

Of orthopaedic footwear and possession orders

Not a particularly significant case, but not one you see every day either. Nuisance by adverts for wigs, orthopaedic footwear, and dating agencies.

Accent Peerless Ltd v Kingsdon & Anor [2007] EWCA Civ 1314 was an appeal of an outright possession order on an assured tenancy. The possession order was made on the basis of Ground 14 Nuisance. The tenants, mother and daughter, both suffered from mental health disorders:

The main symptoms of their disorder were a hypersensitivity to noise, a propensity to exaggerate the effect of noise and other disturbances, agoraphobic tendencies, a tendency to misunderstand and chronic complaining.

So when their new neighbours undertook some apparently fairly extensive … Read the full post



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