Case Summaries: 26 July 1999

THE FOLLOWING notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Royalties

Burton and anor v FX Music Ltd; Taube v FX Music Ltd; Ch D (Nicholas Warren QC as a deputy High Court judge) 16 June 1999.

THERE WAS no rational distinction, in an action for royalties, between moneys received and retained under a Quistclose trust and moneys which would arise in the future: the trust created affected all royalties, past and future.

Stephen Bate (Kanaar & Co) for Taube; David Waxman (P. Russell & Co) for Burton and Wainwright.

Bankruptcy

Official Receiver v Milborn; Ch D (Judge Rich QC as a deputy High Court judge) 6 July 1999.

WHEN CONSIDERING whether to exercise the power under s 279 of the Insolvency Act 1986 to suspend the discharge of a bankrupt, the court had to be satisfied of the bankrupt's non-compliance with his obligations under the Act: reasonable suspicion of non-compliance was not sufficient.

Ingrid Newman (Moore & Blatch) for the respondent; Gilbert Campbell (Official Receiver) in person.

Immigration

R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex p Mbanja; CA (Butler- Sloss, Pill LJJ, Lord Lloyd of Berwick) 1 July 1999.

WHEN THE Home Secretary was considering whether to issue a certificate under s 2 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 authorising the removal of an asylum seeker from the United Kingdom to a third country, the fact that there was disagreement between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the authorities of the third country as to the appropriateness of its admissions procedure did not require the Home Secretary to decline to issue the certificate.

Manjuit Gill, Asoka Dias (Powell & Co) for the appellant; Mark Shaw (Treasury Solicitor) for the Home Secretary.

Police

Osman v DPP; QBD, Div Ct (Sedley LJ, Collins J) 1 July 1999.

A FAILURE by a police officer to give details of his or her name and police station as required by s 2 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to a person about to be searched under s 60(4) and (5) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 rendered the search unlawful.

Wayne Jordash (Hornby Ackroyd & Levy) for the appellant; Joseph Boothby (CPS) for the Crown.

Practice

Lunnun v Singh and ors; CA (Peter Gibson, Clarke LJJ, Jonathan Parker J) 1 July 1999.

WHERE A default judgment with damages to be assessed had been entered in respect of the plaintiff's claim for damages caused by water leakage from the defendants' sewer, that judgment was only conclusive as to the liability of the defendants as pleaded in the statement of claim. Accordingly, at the subsequent hearing to assess damages, the defendants could raise any point which went to the quantification of damages provided it was not inconsistent with any issue raised by the judgment.

Andrew Latimer (Hill Dickinson, Manchester) for the plaintiff; Gordon Exall (Brooke North, Leeds) for the defendant.

Police pensions

R v Kellam, ex p South Wales Police Authority and anor; QBD, Crown Office List (Richards J) 2 July 1999.

WHERE A police officer applied for a policeman's injury award under the Police Pensions Regulations 1987, it was sufficient for the purposes of reg A11 that there was a causal connection between the injury and the applicant's service as a police officer: it was not necessary to establish that work circumstances were the sole cause of the injury.

Mary O'Rourke (Solicitor, South Wales Police Authority) for the applicant; Andrew Hillier (Le Brasseur J. Tickle) for the respondent; Gavin Millar (Russell Jones & Walker) for the interested party.

Crime

R v Attorney General, ex p Rockall; QBD, Crown Office List (Maurice Kay J) 2 July 1999.

A STATUTORY conspiracy to corrupt did not attract the presumption in s 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1916 that any "money, gift, or other consideration . . . shall be deemed to have been paid or given or received corruptly . . . unless the contrary is proved", and accordingly there was no question that the trial of such an offence was or might not be consistent with the right to a fair trial enshrined in art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

David Etherington QC, Richard Kovalevsky (Hewitson Becke & Shaw) for the applicant; David Perry (Treasury Solicitor) for the Attorney General.