In Practice | Law Gazette
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Immigration
Asylum seeker – Detention – Claimant being detained under non-suspensive appeals process
R (on the application of JB (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: Court of Appeal, Civil Division: 12 June 2013
The claimant was a Jamaican national who came to the UK and claimed asylum on the grounds of his risk of persecution in Jamaica on account of him being a homosexual. The claimant was detained under the non-suspensive appeals process and his application for asylum refused. The claimant applied for judicial review of the defendant secretary of state's decision to include Jamaica in the designated list of countries contained in section 94(4) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the decision to detain him. The judge dismissed the claimant's application. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the claimant's appeal on the basis that the secretary of state had not been entitled to conclude that there was in general in Jamaica no serious risk of persecution of persons entitled to reside there, nor could she have been satisfied at the time of the claimant's detention that a fair and sustainable determination of his claim could have been made within a period of two weeks.
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Appeal
Practice – Family proceedings – Ancillary relief
Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd and others: Supreme Court: 12 June 2013
The wife brought ancillary relief proceedings following a divorce between her and the husband and joined as additional respondents a number of companies belonging to a group which the judge found to be wholly owned and controlled by the husband. One of the companies was the legal owner of five residential properties in the UK and another company was the legal owner of two more residential properties in the UK. The judge concluded that, in applications for financial relief ancillary to a divorce, a wider jurisdiction to pierce the corporate veil was available under section 24 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (the 1973 act) and ordered the husband to procure the transfer of the properties to the wife in partial satisfaction of a lump sum order. The companies appealed against the orders made against them. The Court of Appeal considered that the judge ought not to have made the order. The wife appealed against that decision to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in allowing the appeal, held that the piercing of the corporate veil could not be justified in the instant case by reference to any general principle of law and that it was impossible to say that a special and wider principle applied in matrimonial proceedings by virtue of section 24(1)(a) of the 1973 act. However, on the evidence, the husband had, at all relevant times, been the beneficial owner of the properties which therefore were held on resultant trust for him. That was the only basis on which the companies could be ordered to convey the properties to the wife.
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Pensions
Construction of pension scheme – Claimant being principal employer of occupational pension scheme – Defendants being trustees of pension scheme – Construction of rules governing scheme
Royal Mail Group Ltd v Evans and others: Chancery Division: 11 June 2013
The Chancery Division agreed with Royal Mail and held that the definitive trust deed and rules, which governed a pension plan, should be construed to mean that the relevant members continued to be entitled to have their pensions increased (in payment or deferment) by the increases which would be applicable as a result of the rules applicable under Section A or B of the Post Office Pension Plan (POPP), as the case might be, as they stood as at 31 March 2001. Accordingly, none of the relevant members of the scheme had an entitlement under POPP to have their pension increase in line with the retail prices index.
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Bribery Act: ‘facilitation payments’
The ‘Star Chamber’, a somewhat sinister-sounding governmental group tasked with reducing bureaucracy, is to carry out a review of the Bribery Act 2010 with a view to examining facilitation payments. At present, the act draws no distinction between facilitation payments or other payments, such that any payment (facilitating or otherwise) is capable of being caught as a bribe.
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Changes to public law
The pressures on the public purse as much as those of the present Conservative government have brought about yet more radical changes to public law proceedings. To echo the words of Sir James Munby, the president of the Family Division: ‘The family justice system is undergoing the most radical reforms in a lifetime. The process of reform is little short of revolutionary.’ For those on the coalface, these changes can of course be both exhausting and exhilarating. At every level of the family justice system there is a sense that the goalposts have been moved.
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