Case Summaries

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

Arbitration

Ashbank Property Co Ltd v Department of Transport; ChD (Judge Denis Levy QC); 13 July 1994.

An application to set aside an arbitration award should be made by originating motion to a single judge in the Commercial Court of the Queen's Bench Division. Where the notice of motion had been issued in the wrong division, it was inappropriate to transfer the motion to the commercial list because that would be effectively to grant extra time for an appeal.

Lincoln Crawford (Treasury Solicitor) for the Department of Transport; Timothy Lyons (Peter Green & Co for Nuttall Hogg & Co, Stockport) for Ashbank Property.

Collective agreement

Davies and ors v Hotpoint Ltd; EAT (Mummery J, AC Blyghton, KM Hack); 21 July 1994.

Under a collective agreement which established a minimum wage subject to a condition for approved short-time working paying less than the minimum as an alternative to redundancy, the employer had to obtain the approval of the relevant trade unions on behalf of the employees before introducing short-time working.

Brian Langstaff QC (Rowley Ashworth) for the employees; Jonathan Parkin (Cobbett Leak Almond, Manchester) for the employers.

Corporation

Re Little Olympian Eachways Ltd; CHD (Lindsay J); 18 July 1994.

When considering whether a plaintiff corporation is 'ordinarily resident' out of the jurisdiction for the purpose of RSC Ord 23 r 1, the court was required to look for where the company's central management and control actually abided, the test adopted in De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd v Howe (1906) AC 455. The test in Adams v Cape Industries plc (1990) Ch 433 was less helpful.

William Stubbs QC (Taylor Joynson Garrett) for the first

to fourth applicants; Alastair Walton (Herbert Smith) for the fifth and sixth applicants; Robin Potts QC and David Mabb (Withers) for the

petitioner.

Immigration

R v Special Adjudicator and anor, Ex p Gnanavaratham; CA (Nourse, Glidewell, Simon Brown LJJ); 15 Sept 1994.

On an appeal against the issue by the Home Secretary of a certificate that the applicant's claim for political asylum was without foundation, on the ground that a third country via which the applicant had arrived and to which he could be returned was 'safe' in that, inter alia, its government would not send the applicant elsewhere in a manner contrary to the provisions of the 1950 Geneva Convention and 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees, the special adjudicator should decide on the material put before him and was not obliged to search the files for recent decision of other adjudicators about the immigration and asylum procedures adopted or not adopted in that third country. However, if he knew of such decisions, which could properly be referred to for factual information, he could not take them into account without first giving the parties an opportunity to consider and make submissions on them. Moreover, it was at least arguable that if an adjudicator knew of a recent decision as to the 'safety' of a third country in respect to which the Home Secretary had certified an applicant's claim to be without foundation, he should, if he differed from that previous decision, give his reasons for doing so.

John Walsh (Param & Co, Colindale) for the applicants; Lisa Giovannetti (Treasury Solicitor) for the adjudicator.