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Company: Share and share alike?

Alex Fox and Clare Arthurs explore the court’s approach to unfair prejudice claims It is not enough to establish prejudicial conduct; the conduct must also be ‘unfairly’ prejudicial. The court’s power to provide remedies for shareholders in respect of the way in which a company’s affairs are conducted stems entirely from statute, residing now in …
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Bribery Act: Extradition: the long arm of the law?

Michael Caplan QC assesses the impact of recent developments in extradition on corporate practice What will ‘in the interests of justice’ mean? How will this be determined? If a district judge ruled against the trial taking place in the UK it would be exceedingly difficult to overturn that on appeal.The long arm of American justice …
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Privilege: Privacy: it’s a privilege

Richard Pike, Henry Garfield and Phoebe Seers review the law relating to legal professional privilege in internal investigations. The link between legal profession privilege and the legal profession is a natural one given the close relationship between lawyers and the administration of justice. There can be no doubt that corporate internal investigations are a hot …
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Costs: A contingency fee by any other name

Robert Platt and Leah Alpren-Waterman discuss damages-based agreements Including counsel’s fees in the cap on the proportion of damages that can be sought as a contingency fee would be consistent with the government’s approach in limiting the total proportion of damages that can be recovered as a fee by the lawyer.In April 2013, the Legal …
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Arbitration: Spoilt for choice, or a choice spoiled?

Richard Oliver examines recent judicial developments on the treatment of sole option dispute resolution clauses Even though RTC is a decision of the highest commercial court in Russia, it is not technically binding on anyone other than the parties concerned. A ‘sole option’ dispute resolution clause is a clause giving one party to a contract …
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Damages: Second guessing

Tracy Head reports on a revision of Simmons v Castle The 10% increase in general damages is part of the overall package of reforms to incentivise reasonable litigation behaviour and control litigation costs. It is one of the measures designed to assist claimants who will have to pay success fees. The most senior judges of …
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Practice: Doing it yourself

Thomas Crockett looks at recent judicial guidance on litigants in person In Tinkler, Sharpe J concluded that the specific facts of the case, none less than the fact that Mr Elliott was a LIP, allowed her to exercise her discretion to find that Mr Elliott had acted ‘promptly’ for the purposes of CPR 39.3(5). It …
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Disclosure: Creative writing? The courts and novel disclosure orders

Clare Arthurs and Chris Hoyer Millar assess the impact of Nolan on disclosure in practice While the facts in Hicks are very particular, it is an interesting exercise in what the court described as a three-fold balancing act. Disclosure forms the core of most cases, and can be a crucial stage in terms of tactics, …
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Privilege: Nearly free speech

Alice Anderson and Sarah Harris look at lessons to be learned from Mayer v Hoar Malice can be established where the defendant had an improper motive and knew that the statement was false or was recklessly indifferent as to whether the statement was true or not. As any seasoned defamation lawyer will know, two of …
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Practice: Examining a gift horse

Tracy Head examines the tension between Jackson and the Court of Appeal’s declaration to increase general damages The 10% increase in general damages did not appear on the face of the Bill. This absence did not go unnoticed during the Bill’s passage through Parliament and fuelled the debate that a 10% increase was not enough.Lord …
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