The law takes different positions on the responsibility of owners for damage caused by their animals, depending on the type of animal and the circumstances under which the damage occurred. A recent case illustrating this dealt with a road traffic accident caused by a runaway cow.
The cow had escaped from a field and strayed onto a road, where it was hit and killed by the claimant....
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Nowadays, it is becoming less and less common for business to be transacted ‘on a handshake’ and a recent case highlights the dangers of failing to get formal documentation in place to confirm the terms of an agreement.
The case involved a property developer, who made an oral agreement with the management of a company that owned a block of flats to the effect that...
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The next round of changes resulting from the Companies Act 2006 come into effect on 1 October 2008. The most important of these are as follows:
• Every company must have at least one director who is a ‘natural person’. This means that companies where the directors are exclusively other companies (as is not uncommon for subsidiaries) will...
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Customers who don’t pay their bills are bad enough, but customers who don’t pay their bills and then attempt to sue when the supplier stops work could be considered to be very bad news indeed.
This situation can occur if a customer suffers a loss because their supplier has not done the work contracted and the contract is still ‘live’.
In a recent...
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HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are not known for their approval of a casual approach to record keeping, so claiming expenses without complete documentation has always been a problem area. However, the reality, as every businessperson knows, is that maintaining complete and accurate documentation for all transactions is a practical impossibility.
HMRC do recognise this and have...
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Buying a business can be a risky undertaking. Even if the normal due diligence work is done with great care, sometimes there can be skeletons in the cupboard, which can emerge to your detriment. It is a particularly risky business when the vendors are less than totally honest.
In a recent case, the purchaser of a business discovered, some time after having taken it over, that it had...
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With banks seeking ever tougher terms from borrowers and acting more quickly to protect their position when lending terms are breached, a recent decision shows the wisdom of making sure that the lending terms are well understood.
The case involved a lender who advanced to the shareholders of a company money which they then put into the business. When the loan was not repaid, the...
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A recent boundary dispute has illustrated the desirability of ensuring that when a property is sold, the description of it in the conveyance is as clear as possible.
The dispute was over a farmhouse and adjacent fields, which were at one time under common ownership. In 1988 they were sold separately, the farmhouse being sold first and then the fields. The original owner had built a...
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A recent court ruling has confirmed the right of a garden owner to manage his garden without undue interference from the Forestry Commission. The case hinged on the definition of a garden and whether the owner of the property was entitled to treat his garden as such, despite the fact that it had become overgrown and had not been used as a garden for some time.
The case originated...
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Where informal (or no) arrangements are made regarding property ownership or financing, disagreements are often the result.
Recently, a dispute about ownership of a property arose between a brother and sister. The brother had lived with their mother until her death and at that point had succeeded to the secure tenancy of her council house. Using the ‘right to buy’...
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10 Recent Articles
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