Law Reports:CASE SUMMARIES: 13 OCTOBER 1997

Law Reports

The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Road Traffic

Secretary of State for Transport v Richards; QBD Div Ct (Henry LJ Gage J) 1 July 1997.

A person did not fall outside the exemption contained in para 22(1)(a) of Sch 2 to the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 if he stopped briefly to buy petrol and cigarettes on his way to the garage where he had booked an MOT test and was not, therefore, guilty of keeping a vehicle on a public road for which a licence under the Act was not in force.

Frederic Raffrey (Martin Ford, Legal Adviser, DVLA, Swansea) for the appellant; the respondent did not appear and was not represented.

Tax

McManus v Griffiths (Inspector of Taxes); ChD (Lightman J) 18 July 1997.

Where a contract, described as a contract of employment, provided for duties to be performed in return for a salary, and in addition for services to be provided at the expense of the employee who was to retain the profits of those services, the profits were taxable under Sched D Case I. There was no reason why two receipts under the same contract should not be differently treated for tax purposes.

Stephen Silman (Aitken Kelly Associates) for the taxpayer; Timothy Brennan (Inland Revenue Solicitor) for the Crown.

Search warrants

R v Chief Constable of Warwickshire, ex p Fitzpatrick; QBD (DivCt) (Rose LJ, Jowitt J) 1 Oct 1997.

A person complaining of excessive seizure in breach of s 16(8) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 should not seek his remedy by way of judicial review but should rely on his private law remedy, since judicial review was not a fact finding exercise and as such was an extremely unsatisfactory tool by which to determine whether there had been a seizure of material not permitted by a search warrant.

Timothy Barnes QC and Colin Thompson (Howes Percival, Northamton) for the applicants; Timothy King QC and Graham Wells (Solicitor for Warwickshire Constabulary) for the respondent.

Duty of Care

Holbeck Hall Hotel Ltd and anor v Scarborough Borough Council; QBD (Official Referees) (Judge Hicks QC) 2 Oct 1997.

The principal established by Leakey v National Trust [1980] QB 485 that an occupier of uphill land owed a general duty of care to a neighbouring downhill occupier in relation to a hazard occurring on the land, whether that hazard was man-made or natural, applied equally to an owner of downhill land. The defendant, as occupier of the downhill land forming cliffs supporting the plaintiffs' land, was liable in damages for failure to reduce the hazard of land slips, of which it was aware.

Christopher Symons QC, Paul Reed (Elliott & Co) for the plaintiffs; Paul Darling (Dibb Lupton Alsop) for the defendant.

Practice

Canada Trust Co and ors v Stolzenberg and ors; ChD (Neuberger J) 3 Oct 1997.

The fact that the disclosure requirements of a Mareva injunction required a defendant to breach the law of another country was a factor to be taken into account by the court when considering whether to make, continue or enforce the order.

Philip Marshall (Denton Hall) for the plaintiffs; Michael Briggs QC (Clifford Chance) for the fourth defendant.