Unpaid service charges/how to save your home The questions are: (i) is the service charge due? (ii) can the landlord rely on that unpaid charge to claim possession? Does the claimed service charge accord with the lease? Carefully study the lease. There have been many, many cases and it is likely that the wording has been argued over before the decision reached on identical wording. Has there been consultation? Are the charges reasonable? Have they been demanded soon enough? The lease is not the end of the story. Long lessees have valuable rights the Landlord and Tenant Act (LTA) 1985.…
I run of a mineral extraction company. I entered into a joint venture with another company in China as a minority partner. There is no clause in the contract that stipulated where arbitration should take place. We are now in dispute and because the contract was drafted in China we are worried that the arbitration will have to be held there. Do we have any options about resolving the dispute elsewhere? The choice of country where the arbitration takes place, called the seat, has important implications. It is not just simply the venue for the hearing. Arbitrators apply the procedural…
A member of staff has been making racist comments on Twitter. It is her personal account but it identifies her as working here. Can we discipline her? Establish whether this breaches any of your existing policies. Although the employee was using his personal account her behaviour may still be caught by your discrimination and harassment policy (if it is sufficiently widely drawn) or by the general law against conduct bringing the employer into disrepute. An employment tribunal is still likely to consider disciplinary action justified because of the connection with work and the serious nature of the conduct. There is…
A senior member of staff has been using recording devices in the office to monitor workplace conversations. What are my obligations to the employees concerned and do I have a legal right to dismiss the individual for infringing the privacy of colleagues? The employee’s recording contravenes the Data Protection Act 1998. Their use amounts to misconduct. You may be able fairly to dismiss the employee for this misconduct, if dismissal for this act alone is reasonable. Factors that may affect whether this is reasonable include the importance you the place on complying with data protection laws (likely to be of…
Credit rating agencies play an important role in the field of consumer credit. A whole section of reported court cases concerned the potential impact on successful claimants of their records remaining unchanged in relation to a debt which was outstanding but unenforceable. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 credit rating agencies are subject to the principal that all data is accurate and kept up to date. If that principle is breached compensation may be payable if the data holder – in this case the credit rating agency – cannot prove it took reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the…
Credit rating agencies play an important role in the field of consumer credit. A whole section of reported court cases concerned the potential impact on successful claimants of their records remaining unchanged in relation to a debt which was outstanding but unenforceable. Under the Data Protection Act 1998 credit rating agencies are subject to the principal that all data is accurate and kept up to date. If that principle is breached compensation may be payable if the data holder – in this case the credit rating agency – cannot prove it took reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the…
The courts have been wary of allowing litigants in property disputes to import the principles set out in Jones in respect of cohabitation but this approach is not inflexible. The Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v Kernott received approval from many who hoped it would enable fairness and justice to be done in domestic property situations. It created a perception that the court’s discretion in property disputes had been widened by the introduction of a concept of fairness, borrowed from the family court’s approach towards financial remedies on divorce. The justices in Jones set out a number of principles for determining…
Rodney Hylton-Potts said Many people wrongly assume their rights are covered by common law marriage as a result of cohabitation, but there is no such thing as a common law wife. The law The orders available to spouses do not apply to cohabitants, who have normatively relied on strict contractual law and property law principles on relationship breakdown. Cohabitants have no right to claim maintenance for themselves; they are not automatically next of kin for one another and do not automatically inherit the other’s property when one dies intestate. However, steps can be taken by cohabitants during their relationship in…
Rodney Hylton- Potts, leading family lawyers said: Court rulings have seen an increased focus on needs as the prevailing factor when quantifying such payments. There has been a move towards term orders and away from joint lives orders. Statutory provision By section 25A of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, when making a final order, it is the duty of the judge to consider whether it would be appropriate to impose a clean break, as soon as it just and reasonable. Also judge shall consider whether those payments should be made for a limited term which would be sufficient for the…
The Daily Mail article attached is a salutary tale, but it’s real lesson is the conviction of the benefit cheat’s husband. Click to read: Benefits cheat given £135,000 because she was ‘too frail to open a bottle’ is caught scuba diving on holidays around the world A benefit fraudster is usually helped by a family member, typically a spouse or partner, who often is not prosecuted. The benefit fraud investigators are tightening up on this considerably, and as in this case, the two spouses or partners will be alongside each other in the dock charged with obtaining money by deception,…
