After a bitterly fought 10-year legal battle, the residents of Dale Farm, an illegal building site in Essex, are taking their case to the High Court in a last-minute attempt to halt their imminent eviction.
The approximately 80 families who live on the site are travellers who own the land. Most of the residents have lived in their homes on the land for ten years or more. However, the buildings erected on the site are not council approved. (more…)
A County Durham waste and recycling company has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive following the serious injury of a worker who was reversed into by one of the fleet’s vehicles.
The 25-year-old employee of First Skips Ltd in Shotton Colliery was sorting recyclable material by hand when the incident occurred on 8 October 2009. The driver of the vehicle, in the course of carrying out his operations, reversed into the area where the man was working, striking him and knocking him to the ground. (more…)
Following a poorly thought through plot, Lee Platt, of Manchester, has pleaded guilty to blackmailing Coleen Rooney, the wife of Manchester United and England footballer Wayne Rooney. Platt was today convicted by the Manchester Crown Court and will be back before the Court at a later date for sentencing.
A self-employed roofing contractor from Essex has been given a suspended prison sentence after a friend of his fell through the roof he was contracted to replace. His friend, Mr Waughman, a 58 year old man from Tiptree, suffered a stroke and fell through a gap in the rafters on to the floor below. Mr Waughman sustained multiple injuries and died just over three weeks later in hospital. (more…)
The President of the Prison Governors Association has claimed that those charged with offences following the recent riots are being sentenced disproportionately harshly. The President asserts there has been a “feeding frenzy” of those convicted of riot-related crimes.
The Department of Health has confirmed it will change the rules that currently apply to the provision of counselling services for women who are considering abortion. Currently, charities and medics have exclusive responsibility for counselling women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. The changes to the law will ensure that women are offered counselling “independently” of existing abortion services.
The internet is an amazing resource but it cannot always be trusted. Some websites can be informative if you have a general interest in the way the law works but others can be seriously misleading. If you are considering taking someone to court or are being taken to court yourself, you are always best off being represented by a professional lawyer. Be very wary of any website that claims you can avoid paying tax, speeding fines, or being sued for a breach of contract simply by the use of a magic legal formula. The law does not work that way. (More…)
New guidance is to be given to courts by the Ministry of Justice urging them to impose tougher community penalties instead of jail sentences on unemployed offenders.
Community work under the ‘Community Payback’ scheme, formerly known as community service, should be a minimum of 28 hours of unpaid work carried out over a four-day week, the guidance says. (more…)
A 63-year-old former paramedic is seeking personal injury compensation after an NHS surgeon accidentally removed the wrong part of his brain during a tumour biopsy operation.
John Tunney had the operation after a tumour in his pituitary gland was discovered by a scan. However, the surgeon at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry, removed healthy tissue instead of the tumour, leaving Mr Tunney partially sighted and in constant need of care. (more…)
Elizabeth Watson, a private investigator, was jailed for nine months yesterday for contempt of court, after she helped Victoria Haigh spread entirely false accusations about Haigh’s former partner during their battle for their child.
Previous court hearings, held in private, have already found that Haigh fabricated allegations of sex abuse against her former partner, David Tune, and falsely accused him of abusing their daughter, ‘X’. She was also found by the courts to have ‘coached’ her daughter, now seven years old, into repeating the allegations. (more…)
