We round up some of the most relevant 
and interesting developments from 2011 that may affect your business.

2011 CASE HIGHLIGHTS

As ever, very few product liability cases made it to court, but of note this year are the following.
 Continue reading “Product liability developments in 2011: what do they mean for your business?”

The impact of the Bribery Act 2010 has been a key focus for business across the UK over the past year. The Act came into force on 1 July 2011 in Scotland as it did in the rest of the UK, but there are real differences in how the new anti-corruption regime will operate north of the border. A crucial, practical, difference is that Scotland will operate its own self-reporting initiative distinct from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) regime in place in England and Wales. The Scottish initiative was introduced on 1 July, at which time guidance was issued by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service on how it would operate. See guidance on the approach of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to reporting by businesses of bribery offences: http://www.copfs.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Self%20reporting%20guidance%20FINAL%20_3_.pdf.


Continue reading “Bribery and anti-corruption: self-reporting in Scotland”

Equal treatment has yet to become fully embedded in the Netherlands. Although it is an essential part in the practice of law, neither employers nor employees always grasp the full impact that equal treatment has on their arrangements or actions. In this article, the authors will describe how equal treatment in the Netherlands actually works on a practical level.
 Continue reading “Equal treatment in Dutch employment law”

Nestled in the background for the latter six months of a busy year for media law was Rio Ferdinand’s action against the Sunday Mirror over an article that was published in April 2010. While full privacy hearings are always notable for their rarity, the Ferdinand v MGN Ltd [2011] judgment is notable for the judge’s acceptance of arguments, long since disapproved of by the Court of Appeal, that where an individual may be considered by some to be a role model, that individual’s private life may be less deserving of protection than yours or mine. 
 Continue reading “The private lives of public figures”

‘But I thought it was privileged!’ is a protest that litigation lawyers are used to hearing. Disclosure exercises inevitably raise complex questions about what is and is not privileged: and whenever the more nuanced and difficult questions arise, it is clear that the legal position as to what is, in fact, privileged is rarely as simple as it appeared when the relevant documents were created. 
 Continue reading “Can we claim privilege?”

Most commentators are agreed that 2012 will be an extremely difficult year for business globally and particularly in the eurozone. In the UK, both landlords and tenants are going to have to be acutely aware of their legal rights in a climate where many more business failures are predicted. The law relating to the insolvency of tenants and the effect on landlord and tenant relationships around the UK has inevitably developed in these tough times and, as a result, recent case law provides some helpful guidelines for well-advised landlords and tenants. 
 Continue reading “Administrators, landlords and tenants: an update”

Going into 2012, we’re now a decent enough distance away from September 2008 to know that the world changed and that the next few years will continue to be, well, different or the new normal, depending on your point of view. 2008-09 more or less coincided with the generational shifts that the internet is bringing about hitting the mainstream: the rise of the cloud and social media and the growing maturity of the internet in meeting more and more of the consumer’s requirements.

This year there are two sets of themes for IT law going into 2012. The first, more strategic, set is around the cloud and the internet, two journeys that will continue over the rest of this decade. The second, more tactical, is about the specific policy developments we’ll see in 2012, around data, privacy, intellectual property, e-money, social media in the enterprise and sector-specific regulation of technology. At each level, the legal developments are likely to keep IT lawyers busy.
 Continue reading “Trends in information technology law: looking ahead to 2012”

The American Journal of International Law was founded by a group of publicists who believed that international law could abolish (or at least substantially diminish) the role of power in world affairs. But numerous articles in the journal focused on this relationship – how power constrains international law, how the powerful can harness international law to their ends, and how international law may autonomously reconfigure power in its own right1. While some believed that power and coercion could become far less prominent in world affairs through the development of international law, others viewed international law as a reflection of the interests of powerful states. This relationship and its analysis shows that ‘power’ is omnipresent in international affairs and has its privileges, one of these being the ability to control international negotiations. 
 Continue reading “The contribution of the GATT system to the development of a rule-based dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO”

In December 2011 the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) released three reports:

• an inspection of the UKBA Visa Section in New York;
• an annual report 2010-11; and
• a global review of entry clearance decision making.

This article will look at the global review of entry clearance decision making. 
 Continue reading “Entry clearance: independent chief inspector’s global review”