December 2012 Archives

A McDonald's waitress has won £3,000 after being fired for gross misconduct, after being accused by her bosses of giving too much chocolate topping to a colleague on an ice cream 'McFlurry'.

Sarah Finch, 19, had worked at the Carmarthen branch of McDonald's in West Wales for 18 months and, because she had started her job before 6^th April 2012, was entitled to bring a claim for compensation against her employer for unfair dismissal.

After being dismissed, Ms Finch brought a claim against franchisee Lonetree, who run several McDonald's restaurants under licence.

The Government has announced that it will relax digital copyright law to allow the making of digital copies of music and films for personal use.

At the moment it is illegal under UK law to reproduce copyright material, even if it is for your own personal use.

The law prevents music owners from ripping songs from a CD to their MP3 player, or from transferring ebooks, music, films and games from one of their devices to another.

A proxy website launched by minor political party, the Pirate Party UK, has been closed down, after lawyers representing the British Phonographic Industry threatened it with legal action.

Earlier in 2012 the UK High Court ruled that the website The Pirate Bay must be closed down in the UK and asked the leading internet service providers to block access to the site.

The Pirate Bay offers users the opportunity to illegally access copyright material for free, without the permission of the copyright owner.

The Bill of Rights Commission that was set up to debate the future of Human Rights in the UK has failed to reach a unanimous conclusion to their discussions.

The Commission on a Bill of Rights was set up as part of the deal that saw the Liberal Democrats join the Conservatives in a coalition government.

The Commission was formed on 18 March 2011 and reported its findings on Wednesday this week.

The Director of Public Prosecution, Keir Starmer, has released new guidelines that will inform when the Crown Prosecution Service will act against those who make offensive posts online in England and Wales.

The new guidelines state that individuals should only face prosecution if their online comments on sites such as Facebook and Twitter go beyond simply being offensive.

There had been some concern that clamping down too vigorously on online remarks would stifle free speech.

Employment law has been in the spotlight for much of 2012, with several changes aimed at streamlining bureaucracy and reducing red tape for businesses.

The trend looks set to continue into 2013, with the recent news that the Government will implement proposals first mooted at the Conservative party conference in October, that will allow employees to swap certain basic employment rights in exchange for shares in their company.

Despite considerable opposition to the plans from businesses, the so-called 'employee shareholder' contracts look set to be implemented from April 2013.

The local hunt operating within the Oxfordshire constituency of Prime Minister David Cameron has been fined under the Hunting Act 2004 after admitting that it had intentionally hunted foxes with dogs.

The Heythrop Hunt and its former huntsman Julian Barnsfield and retired hunt master Richard Sumner all pleaded guilty to hunting a wild animal with dogs under section one of the Hunting Act 2004.

The hunt was fined £4,000 whilst the two men received fines of £1,000 and £1,800 respectively.

The father of cyclist Sam Harding, who was killed by a 153 bus on the Holloway Road in London on 6 August last year, has said that there is a gap in law when it comes to prosecuting drivers for 'car dooring' cyclists.

Mr Harding's father, Keith Harding, expressed his disappointment last week after a jury at the Old Bailey found Kenan Aydogdu not guilty of manslaughter following the incident that left Sam Harding dead on the road.

Mr Aydogdu admitted that he had failed to check his mirrors when opening his car door and had fitted tinted glass onto his Audi just before the incident last year, making it even harder to see the approaching cyclist.

The legal aid bill for the failed deportation of cleric Abu Qatada currently stands at well over £500,000 according to official figures released by Justice Minister Jeremy Wright.

It was expected that Mr Qatada would be deported to Jordan last month, but the move was blocked at the last minute by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), who ruled that there was a risk that evidence obtained using torture would be used against him at trial.

The Home Secretary Theresa May subsequently launched an application to appeal the decision on a point of law to the Court of Appeal, which was granted on 5 December.

Internet piracy looks set to face further challenges after the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the body that represents the music industry in the UK, announced it will take the Pirate Party UK to court to block ongoing access to banned site, the Pirate Bay.

The popular internet piracy site, The Pirate Bay was shut down by the High Court in April 2012 after it ruled that the site infringed copyright laws.

Internet Service Providers including Virgin Media and Sky were told to block access to the site.

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday this week against a Citizens Advice Bureau worker who was attempting to take her legal case all the way to the European Court of Justice.

The woman, known in the action as Mrs X, was a volunteer for Mid-Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau. She contracted HIV and was forced to stop her volunteering work for some time whilst she brought the illness under control.

She claimed that the management at the CAB had forced her out of her role because of her illness, and attempted to challenge the decision to end her volunteering work with the CAB at an employment tribunal.

Senior MPs and members of the House of Lords have warned the Government that its plans to introduce new laws to stop internet 'trolling' may have a 'chilling effect' on the right of free speech.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, the cross-party committee that looks at all matters relating to human rights, warned that reform to libel laws could force website operators like Twitter to remove offensive content, even if that content was not in breach of the law.

The Defamation Bill, which is due to go through the committee stage in the House of Lords on 17 December, has faced considerable criticism during its passage through Parliament.

The Equalities Minister Maria Miller has revealed plans to legalise same-sex marriage to the UK Parliament at Westminster.

The proposals have received widespread political support from MPs across all the major parties; however, religious groups have broadly condemned them.

The latest announcement clarifies how the Government will protect religious faiths from being forced to perform same-sex marriages. Last month the Church of England and Wales voted against permitting same-sex marriages.

The UK Supreme Court has ruled against tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco in a case concerning the legality of a ban on display cases for cigarettes in shops and supermarkets in Scotland.

Bristol-based Imperial Tobacco, producer of Davidoff, John Player Special and Lambert & Butler brands, has failed on two occasions to block the move in Scottish Courts, eventually being forced to take their appeal to the highest court in the UK.

Yesterday the panel of five Supreme Court judges delivered their unanimous verdict, finding against the tobacco company. The ban on display cases in Scotland, brought in by an Act of the Scottish Parliament two years ago, will stand.

The controversial dash for shale gas looks set to take an interesting turn in the next few weeks and months, with two major legislative announcements likely to be announced that will change the landscape of energy provision in the UK.

The Government is widely expected to announce it will remove its ban on the 'fracking' technique used to extract shale gas from the earth next week.

However, the excitement that that announcement will generate will be somewhat tempered by news coming out of Brussels that the EU intends to legislate to control the production of shale gas, amid fears that fracking could cause earthquakes.

A new £1bn power station at Pembroke in Wales may be forced to have a new cooling system added after it emerged that its existing design may flout environmental laws, reports BBC Wales.

BBC Wales has seen a leaked document produced by the European Commission that formally notifies the UK Government that it has infringed four separate environmental laws on at least 18 occasions.

However, the plant's developers, RWE nPower say that the design and build of the station has been thoroughly scrutinised by regulators.

The Metropolitan Police have contacted their Australian counterparts in the wake of the tragic death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who was found dead last Friday following her involvement in a hoax telephone call.

Australian DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian of 2Day FM had rung the King Edward VII hospital late one night last week pretending to be the Duke of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Ms Saldanha had answered the call and, taken in by the hoax, revealed details of the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge, who had been taken ill suffering from acute morning sickness.

The ongoing row into the amounts of tax paid by leading corporations continues, as it has emerged that Microsoft pays no tax on almost £1.7bn in online revenues, reports The Daily Telegraph.

The revenues are thought to be generated in the UK on products including the new Windows 8 operating system and other software downloads.

However, Microsoft channel the online payments through Ireland and Luxembourg, where corporation tax rates are lower.

A leading lawyer believes that 37 hospital trusts in England and Wales may be breaking the law by requiring disabled patients and visitors to pay for parking in their car parks, reports the BBC.

Disability rights lawyer Chris Fry believes that there has been a misreading of UK law on equality, contained in the Equality Act 2010.

The Act makes it illegal to treat someone differently on the basis of a 'protected characteristic', which is defined to include age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, race, religion, sexual orientation or disability status.

Labour MP and former party chair Hazel Blears yesterday introduced a private members' bill in Parliament, aiming to outlaw the advertising of unpaid internships, which she feels exploit young graduates and school leavers.

The bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday under the so-called 'Ten Minute Rule', or Standing Order Number 23 rules, that allow backbench MPs ten minutes to speak to propose a private bill to fellow MPs in the House of Commons.

Ms Blears' bill is seeking to prohibit the advertisement of long-term, unpaid internships.

The Court of Appeal has ruled against a man who sued his former wife for a larger share of her fortune after their divorce, leaving him with 'nothing but debts' after his legal bills for the case topped £500,000.

It is a case that should serve as a warning to any divorcing couples thinking of hiring the best lawyers and going on the all-out attack: the total legal costs of the divorce to date have reached £1.3m for the couple, something the Court of Appeal judges described as 'profligacy'.

Mohammed Salim Alyami, 40, was arguing for a greater share of his wife Nora Ali Musallam's fortune. Her family previously employed Mr Alyami and has close links with the Saudi Royal family.

It has been a big week for the Royal family, with the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their first baby, followed quickly by the news that the Duchess has been rushed to hospital suffering from the severe, acute nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis gravidarum.

The news of a royal baby and future heir to the throne has thrown the Government into overdrive on its plans to amend the laws of succession, so that the baby will accede to the throne regardless of its gender.

Under the present laws on Royal succession, known as primogeniture, a female child would lose their right to the throne if a younger male child was subsequently born.

An Austrian student group has announced plans to sue Facebook for failing to do enough to protect the privacy of its users.

The group, called Europe-v-Facebook, has been lobbying Facebook for better privacy functionality for the past year.

It has now said that following the company's failure to respond appropriately, it would launch a legal action in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters.

The carbonating drinks machine manufacturer SodaStream has decided to run 'black ads' in response to a regulator ruling that its £11m Christmas advertising campaign 'denigrated' the bottled drinks industry.

Clearcast is the organisation used by broadcasters to ensure that any advertisements they run are compliant with the Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) TV Advertising Standards Code.

The advertisement, available to view on YouTube, shows regular bottled soda drinks exploding every time a SodaStream machine is used. It includes the slogan "with SodaStream you can save 2,000 bottles a year".

The landscape for the sentencing of criminal offenders changed significantly yesterday, after a number of key provisions relating to the sentencing of offenders came into force.

The changes were included in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and include a new 'two strikes' rule, which effectively hands an automatic life sentence to anyone committed of a second serious sexual or violent offence.

Prior to yesterday, the only offence that carried a mandatory life sentence was murder.

The UK may follow Australia's example, by introducing tough new laws to restrict the designs on cigarette packaging.

Australia's new laws came into effect on 1 December, effectively prohibiting cigarette manufacturers from distinguishing themselves in their packaging designs.

The laws restrict the use of logos, colours and branding.

A leading legal advisor to the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics has warned the Government that implementing a crucial proposal of the Inquiry's report would breach human rights law.

The Leveson Inquiry report was finally published last week and included amongst its many recommendations a proposal to toughen up any independent press regulator, by ensuring that statutory law provided for its existence.

The proposal is controversial, for although it stops short of government regulation of the press, it would force the press to form a strong regulator and in doing so its critics say would open the press up to potential political influence in future.