There are a couple of articles in the latest Journal of Housing Law (Vol 11, issue 1 2008) on Malcolm v London Borough of Lewisham and the effect of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 on possession orders. I'd say the articles are of varying interest....
Human Rights for customers
Undertaken at the request of the DCA (as was), the MoJ has published the findings of its 'Human Rights Insight Project'. The BBC did a story on it, and the publication can be found on the MoJ site here. There are a number of things to cheer in the report,...
Hey, you asked…
For some of us internet old timers, who were on usenet before the WWW existed and were hand coding websites in the mid 1990s, it is still a surprise how people treat search engines as something to put a fully fledged question into. January has been a bumper...
Equal Pay and Moral Dilemmas?
This story rumbles on, with several features in today's Guardian, here, here, and here. The paper sees fit to pitch it as something of a moral dilemma, before finally plumping for one side. The terms of the 'dilemma' go something like this. Very large...
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)...
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...
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...
Human Rights and Possession Claims – looking for the exception
The latest case to test the Connors, Kay and Doherty formulations on human rights defences to possession cases (see here for previous post, including the comments) has just had its Court of Appeal judgment released. I would assume that Smith (On Behalf of...
Proprietary Estoppel yet again
Blimey, who declared this Estoppel month? The latest is Powell & Anor v Benney [2007] EWCA Civ 1283. Although the case itself is not that interesting, the judgment is worth a look as it gives a clear overview of the Court of Appeal's current thinking in...
"Reasonable to Occupy" – Nipa Begum revisited
In Waltham Forest v Maloba [2007] EWCA Civ 1281, the Court of Appeal has revisited the issue of 'reasonable to occupy' in terms of the homelessness provisions of Housing Act 1996. Briefly, the facts were that Mr M had lived in the UK since 1989 and acquired...
Constructive Trust and Proprietary Estoppel again
In James v Thomas [2007] EWCA Civ 1212, the Court of Appeal fine-tuned some points on constructive trust and proprietary estoppel, with reference to shares in property. To note from Sir John Chadwick's main judgment: A constructive trust can arise some years...
Badness in courts, of courts and of law lecturers
A quick outline of a busy news day... The Court of Appeal says that (some) provisions of the Legal Services Commission's Unified Contract are unlawful, specifically the most sweeping of the unilateral amendment clauses. The judgment is pretty devastating,...