The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that there was no good reason to validate service retrospectively where the claimant’s solicitors had purported to serve proceedings on the defendant’s solicitors shortly before the claim form expired without first confirming that the solicitors were instructed to accept service: Woodward v Phoenix Healthcare Distribution Ltd [2019] … Read more
Damien Byrne Hill, our head of dispute resolution for the UK and US, reflected on the past challenges and future priorities for the CPR at a conference held at Mansfield College in Oxford last week to mark the 20 year anniversary of the CPR. Damien’s remarks were based on the results of an exercise to … Read more
The Supreme Court has held that the requirement to show “serious harm” under section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013 not only raises the threshold of harm which must be proved but also requires its application to be determined by reference to actual facts regarding the impact of the statement and not just to the … Read more
The High Court has held that a purchaser was entitled to an award of damages amounting to the full purchase price under a share purchase agreement (“SPA”), where the sellers were found in breach of warranty relating to the accounts of the target company: 116 Cardamon Ltd v MacAlister & Anor [2019] EWHC 1200 (Comm). … Read more
The Court of Appeal has held that an exclusive jurisdiction clause in a settlement agreement between an employer and employee was not effective to give jurisdiction to the chosen court. The dispute related to an individual contract of employment and the jurisdiction agreement had not been entered into after the particular dispute had arisen, as … Read more
The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision to set aside a contract on the basis of lawful act duress where there was no finding of bad faith on the part of the defendant – an airline company which had used its monopoly position to exert pressure on its sales agent to enter … Read more
Herbert Smith Freehills has launched a new Banking Litigation blog, which you can find at https://hsfnotes.com/bankinglitigation or via the “More blogs” link above. The new blog contains updates on the latest developments relating to banking litigation topics, drawing on the experience of our banking litigation team in working with clients on some of the largest, highest profile … Read more
The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that a share purchase agreement and disclosure letter should be rectified, with the effect that the defendant sellers of two property development companies gave an unqualified warranty that the companies owned certain freehold properties. In fact, those properties were owned by another of the defendants’ companies which … Read more
