Law Reports: Case Summaries: 1 March 1999

Law Reports

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

Tax

Grant and anor v Watton (HMIT); Ch D (Pumfrey J) 11 Feb 1999.

A TAX liability arose on a director under s 160 of the Taxes Act 1988 (beneficial loans to employees) and on the company under s 419 (loans to participators) where a professional practice used a service company to pay its day to day outgoings for a cost-plus fee, providing funds to the company as necessary and adjusting the final amount at the year end.

Michael Sherry (Garretts) for the taxpayers; Timothy Brennan (IR Solr) for the Crown,

Sentencing

R v Turner and others; CA, Crim Div (Bracewell, Maurice Kay JJ) 11 Feb 1999.

ALTHOUGH THE exercise of judicial discretion attracted the consideration of the European Convention on Human Rights, and sentencing often involved the exercise of judicial discretion, judges were not compelled by the authorities to take the convention into account, nor were they required to give it overriding effect when they considered it together with all other relevant matters.

Martin Sharpe (Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the appellants.

R v Lowe; R v Leask; CA, Crim Div (Lord Bingham CJ, Dyson, Smedley JJ) 12 Feb 1999.

THE IMPOSITION of a sentence to run consecutively to any period of return to prison ordered pursuant to s 40 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 was not prohibited by s 102 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, provided the offender was not released from the s 40 term before the consecutive term was passed.

Ian Storey (Norrie, Waite & Co, Sheffield) for Lowe; Richard Ace (Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for Leask; David Perry, Julie Warburton (CPS) for the Crown; Sallie Bennett-Jenkins (Treasury Solicitor) as amicus curiae.

Licensing

Westminster City Council v Blenheim Leisure (Restaurants) Ltd and ors; QBD, Div Ct (Brooke LJ, Tucker, Forbes JJ) 12 Feb 1999.

IN DETERMINING whether offers to provide sexual services for reward constituted a failure by a licensee to maintain good order in his premises, contrary to r 9(a) of Westminster City Council's Rules of Management for Places of Public Entertainment, the test to be applied was whether the licensee was aware of the activities.

Jeremy Carter-Manning QC, Mark Bryant-Heron (Solr to Westminster City Council) for the council; Ian Glenn QC, Susanna Fitzgerald (Jeffrey Green Russell) for the respondents.

Arbitration

Macob Civil Engineering Ltd v Morrison Construction Ltd; QBD, Tech and Constr Ct (Dyson J) 12 Feb 1999.

IN ENACTING the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, Parliament had not abolished arbitration and litigation of construction disputes. Its intention had been to introduce a speedy mechanism for the settling of disputes in construction contacts on a provisional interim basis, and to require the decisions of adjudicators to be enforced pending the final determination of disputes by arbitration, litigation or agreement.

Delia Dumaresq (Morgan Cole) for the plaintiff; Stephen Furst QC (Wragge & Co) for the defendant.

Crime

R V Drew; CA, Crim Div (Waller LJ, Kay J, the Recorder of London) 15 Feb 1999.

A CHARGE of conspiracy to supply heroin could be brought against a defendant to whom the supply had been made: there was no reason why such a charge was not lawful within s 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967, since the language of the section expressly contemplated the commission of the substantive offence by one of the two defendants.

Michael Longman (Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the appellant; Stephen Dent (CPS) for the Crown.

Company

Re Legal Costs Negotiators Ltd; CA (Roch, Peter Gibson, Henry LJJ) 18 February 1999.

ON AN application by a minority shareholder to strike out a petition brought under s 459 of the Companies Act 1985 by the majority shareholders to force him to give up his investment in the company, the court could look at the realities of the case, and take a pragmatic view that the petition should not be allowed to proceed where the likelihood of the trial judge exercising his discretion to grant the relief claimed was so remote that the case could be described as perfectly hopeless.

Matthew Collings (Dibb Lupton Alsop) for the appellants; Laura Garcia- Miller (Lees Lloyd Whitely) for the respondent.