Law Reports: Case Summaries; 19 April 1999

Law Reports

Sunday 18 April 1999 23:02 BST
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THE FOLLOWING notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Restrictive practices

Re Medicaments and Related Classes of Goods; Restrictive Practices Ct (Buckley J, JA Scott OBE, BD Colgate) 11 March 1999.

SINCE THE making of an order in 1970 by the Restrictive Practices Court to the effect that it was in the public interest to permit agreements leading to the maintenance of resale prices to continue in respect of medicaments and related classes of goods, circumstances had materially changed, and the Director General of Fair Trading should be granted leave to apply under s 17 of the Resale Prices Act 1976 to discharge the 1970 order.

David Oliver QC, Jon Turner (Treasury Solicitor) for the Director General; Mark Cran QC, David Anderson (Cameron McKenna) for the Proprietary Association of Great Britain and the Proprietary Articles Trade Association.

Criminal libel

Gleaves v Insall and other appeals; QBD, Div Ct (Kennedy LJ, Blofeld J) 9 March 1999.

IT WAS not necessary to apply for leave to commence proceedings for criminal libel under s 8 of the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888 where the intended prosection was against the author of a newspaper article. It was clear that the words "person responsible for the publication of a newspaper" in s 8 were to be construed ejusdem generis with the preceding words "any proprietor, publisher, editor", and were thus intended to cover not the contributors but the persons who brought the newspaper out.

The appellants in person; Richard Parkes (Farrer & Co) for the respondent.

Landlord and tenant

Parc Battersea Ltd (in adminstrative receivership) and anor v Hutchinson; Ch D (Moore-Bick J) 18 March 1999.

SECTION 53(1)(a) of the Law of Property Act 1925 was, on its true construction, apt to cover the position where an oral transaction which would otherwise be ineffective in accordance with its terms took effect by operation of law in a manner different from that which the parties had contemplated.

Timothy Dutton (Cameron McKenna) for the plaintiffs; Thomas Jefferies (Payne Hicks Beach) for the defendant.

Estoppel

Locabail (UK) Ltd v Bayfield Properties Ltd and anor; Ch D (Lawrence Collins QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge) 9 March 1999.

IN PRINCIPLE, the interest of a claimant who asserted an interest by way of proprietary estoppel could be protected against a third party as an overriding interest under s 70(1)(g) of the Land Registration Act 1925.

Anthony Mann QC, James Barker (More Fisher Brown) for the plaintiff; Hazel Williamson QC, Richard Morgan (Stephenson Harwood) for the bank.

Town and country planning

Jarmain v Secretary of State for the Environment; QBD Crown Office List (Nigel Macleod QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge) 12 March 1999.

WHILST s 171B(4)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 could not used to cover two different physical developments or two different changes of use, it could be used to cover the same actual breach of planning control described in different ways.

The appellant in person; Natalie Lieven (Treasury Solicitor) for the respondent.

Intellectual property

Microsoft Corp v Plato Technology Ltd; Ch D ( Alan Steinfeld QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge) 11 March 1999.

THE PRINCIPLES set out for the grant of injunctive relief in Coflexip SA v Stolt Comex Seaway MS Ltd [1999] All ER (D) 79 were of general application and could not be regarded as restricted to cases of patent infringement. They were also applicable to cases of trade mark infringement, passing off and breach of copyright.

Michael Tappin (Linklaters & Paines) for the plaintiff; Graham Shipley (Gouldens) for the defendant.

Employment

Express and Echo Publications Ltd v Tanton; CA (Hirst, Peter Gibson, Auld LJJ) 11 March 1999.

A CONTRACT of employment could not be said to be a contract of service unless it contained an obligation on the part of the employee to provide his services personally. When determining whether the relationship between the parties was that of employer and employee a tribunal should concentrate not on what had actually occurred, but should look at the agreement between the parties to discover the mutual obligations identified therein.

Jonathan Swift (Foot & Bowden, Plymouth) for the appellant; the respondent in person.

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