Law report: Case summaries

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

Children

Re C (minors: care proceedings; ordinary residence); Fam D (Wall J) 17 December 1996.

Where a family, whose child- ren were subject to an interim care order, moved from one local authority's area to another's, thereby losing ordinary residence in the first area but without yet acquiring it in the other, the local authority to whom the interim care order had been made remained the designated authority under s 38(1) of the Children Act 1989. The fact that a local authority permitted children to remain at home under an interim care order did not constitute the provision of accommodation within s 23(1)(a) of the Act. Therefore s 105(6) did not apply and the court was free to look at the ordinary residence of the children under s 38(1) without applying the disregard under s 105(6).

Annie Bradwell (Christopher Hinde, Hackney LBC) for the first local authority; Andrew McFarlane (Jonathan Jessup, Surry CC) for the second local authority; Joan Moore (John Ford) for the mother; Lawrence Cohen, solicitor (Stuart Miller & Co) for the guardian ad litem.

Solicitor

Hurlingham Estates Ltd v Wilde & Ptrs; ChD (Lightman J) 10 December 1996.

A competent solicitor, practising in the field of conveyancing or commercial law, should be aware of the trap laid by s 34 of the Income and Taxes Act 1988, which applied where payment of a premium was required under a lease for not more than 50 years and by virtue of which the landlord was treated as becoming entitled to an amount by way of rent at the date when the lease was granted. The defendant solicitors' firm failed to advise the plaintiff that the structure of the relevant transaction would expose it to a charge to tax which could be avoided by formal alterations, and therefore was negligent.

Michael Jefferis (Ernest H. Godson & Co, Sleaford) for the plaintiff; William Stewart-Smith (Barlow Lyde & Gilbert) for the defendant.