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CURRENT LAW DIGEST
In reading these cases note should
be taken of the difference between
English and Irish statute law.
Administrative Law
The hearing of an appeal at quarter sessions from an adminis-
trative decision by a committee of a local authority refusing a
permit for an amusement arcade is a complete rehearing.
Broadly speaking, local decisions are best taken by local
people; but if they are to be free from any form of check,
justice and fair dealing can suffer. A council and its com-
mittees are entitled to agree on a policy provided they do not
impose it inflexibly.
This was stated when their Lordships, the Master of the
Rolls dissenting, dismissed an appeal by Norwich Corporation
from the Divisional Court (Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Jus-
tice, Mr. Justice Cooks and Mr. Justice Fisher) which upheld
the decision of the Recorder of Norwich (Mr. R. M. O. Havers,
Q.C.), allowing the appeal of Sagnata Investments Ltd., of
Magdalen Street, Norwich, against the refusal of the Licensing
Committee of Norwich Corporation to grant a permit for the
provision of amusements with prizes at Old Post Office Court,
Norwich, following an application under the Betting and
Lotteries Act, 1963.
[Sagnata Investments Ltd. v Norwich Corporation;
The
Times,
12th May 1971.]
Bankruptcy
The Court, in considering whether to rescind a receiving order
made against a bankrupt solicitor, held that the exceptional
circumstances that give a Court a discretion to rescind under
Section 108 (1) of the Bankruptcy Act> 1914, must be such as
are closely analogous to the expressly recognised circumstances
under the statute which enable a bankruptcy to be halted or
annulled. The decision in
re Izod
(1898, 1 Q.B. 241) in which
a receiving order was rescinded in exceptional circumstances
and where the statutory requirements were not complied with,
was a special case and did not lay down any general rule.
[Ex parte the Official Receiver and the Debtor;
The Times,
27th May 1971.]
Betting Tax
The Court of Appeal (The Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice
Salmon and Lord Justice Megaw) dismissed an appeal by Mr.
W. Sherman, director of a bookmaking company, of Penarth,
Glamorgan, from the decision of Mr. Justice Paull
(The Times,
November 21st) that general betting duty was payable to the
Customs and Excise Commissioners under Section 12 (5) of the
Finance Act, 1966, not only on the amount of the bettor's stake
but also on a service charge imposed by the bookmaker to
cover "all duties, levies and S.E.T."
[Sherman v Customs and Excise Commissioners;
The Times,
25th May 1971.]
Companies
-
Section 332 (1) provides: "If in the course of the winding up
of a company it appears that any business of the company has
been carried on with intent to defraud creditors of the com-
pany or creditors of any other person or for any fraudulent
purpose, the Court, on the application of the . . . liquidator . . .
of the company, may, if it thinks proper so to do, declare
that any persons who were knowingly parties to the carrying
on of the business in manner aforesaid shall be personally
responsible, for all or any of the debts or other liabilities of the
company as the Court may direct."
[In re Maidstone Building Provisions Ltd.;
The Times,
1st May 1971.]
Contract
The object of interim certificates in building contracts is to
provide the cash available for the contractor or the sub-
contractor to get on with his work. The only sums which can
be deducted from the certificateare liquidated and ascertained
sums which are known to be due This was st.ated when their
Lordships allowed an appeal by the plaintiffs.
[Dewneys Ltd. v F. G. Minter Ltd. and Another;
The
Times,
29th April 1971.]
The Court of Appeal, in what was stated to be in the nature
of a test case, decided that Dutch law was the proper law of a
contract of employment used extensively for recruiting Euro-
pean personnel for overseas rig drilling operations when they
dismissed an appeal by Mr. G. W. Sayers of Easingwold,
Yorkshire, from the decision of Mr. Justice Bean on a prelim-
inary issue as to the proper law of the contract made between
him and International Drilling Co., N.V., a Netherlands com-
pany and a subsidiary of Offshore Drilling Co., of Texas,
United States.
By Clause 8 of the formal printed contract, which was in
English the employee agreed to accept benefits under the
employing company's "compensation program" in lieu of any
other claims, rights, demands or actions, whether at common
law or under the statutes of the United Kingdom or any other
nation which might accrue to him by virtue of accidental
onjury.
[Sayers v International Drilling Co., N.V.;
The Times,
11th May 1971.]
His Lordship held that where a loan was knowingly made in
order to discharge an existing loan which was wholly or parti-
ally illegal, the loan was itself tainted with illegality.
[Spector v Agada;
The Times,
28th May 1971.]
See under
Copyright;
Stovin-Bradford v Volpoint Properties
and Another;
The Times,
25th May 1971.
Constitution
The Court will not at the suit of a subject grant declarations
which impugn the Crown's prerogative to enter into the
Treaty of Rome, even though it may commit the executive
irreversibly to joining the Common Market and mean some
sharing of the sovereignty of these islands with others. The
Court's function is to interpret political decisions when they
have been embodied in Acts of Parliament; and though the
present accepted legal theory is that no Parliament can bind
its successors, political realities may not always necessarily
accord with that legal theory.
[Blackburn v Attorney General;
The Times,
11th May 1971.]
Copyright
Where an architect agrees to prepare plans and drawings for
work on an existing building for a client, for the purpose of
obtaining permission, at a fee substantially less tha,n the
R.I.B.A. scale fees, the contract is subject to an implied term
that the client may not use the plans or any distinctive feature
of them to erect the buildings. If he does so use them the
architect is entitled to sue him for damages for infringement
of his copyright.
[Stovin-Bradford v Volpoint Properties Ltd. and Another;
The Times,
25th May 1971.]
Crime
A scrap metal dealer complies with Section 2 (2) (a) of the
Scrap Metal Dealers Act, 1964, if he enters a fair description
of the scrap metal in question in the book required to be kept
by him under Section 2 (1) of the Act.
The Court dismissed an appeal by the prosecutor against the
dismissal by county justices at Newport, Monmouthshire, last
September of an information against A. Cohen & Co. Ltd.,
scrap metal dealers, with a store at Crosskeys, that having
received certain metal they failed to record the particulars,
namely, the description required by Section 2, contrary to
Section 2 (6).
Section 2 provides: "(1) . . . every scrap metal dealer shall,
at each place occupied by him as a scrap metal store, keep a
book for the purposes of this section, and shall enter in the
book the particulars required .. . with respect to—(a) all
scrap metal received at that place . . . (2) The said parti-
culars, in the case of scrap metal falling within paragraph (a)
of the preceding» subsection are—(a) the description and
weight of the scrap metal . .."
[Atkins v A. Cohen and Co. Ltd.;
The Times,
21st May
1971.]
Justices did not err in law in deciding that a motorist did not
cause "unnecessary obstruction" by leaving his car in a 24
foot wide road for 75 minutes on market day in Oswestry,
Shropshire.
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