Recently in Dispute resolution Category

Vincent Tchenguiz, the Iranian-born property tycoon has decided to settle a multimillion-pound legal case with a former friend, just hours before he was due to take the witness stand to be cross-examined.

The case concerns money owed by Tchenguiz to a man described as his former best friend, Keyvan Rahimian.

Before the case began the two were described as being so close they were akin to brothers. They grew up as family friends in Iran in the late 60s and met again in London years later, when Rahimian worked as head of IT for Tchenguiz's business.

The advent of a shakeup in the way legal services are provided is upon us, thanks to the changes brought about by the Legal Services Act 2007. Under this law, non-legal firms can apply to manage and own businesses which provide legal services for the first time.

The so called 'Tesco Law', was brought about to increase choice and competition in a market which has changed little in decades if not centuries.

The market is in no rush to change, it must be said. There have so far been around 120 applications made to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, the arm of the Law Society which is responsible for overseeing the new entities. Firms which have applied so far include BT, Admiral Insurance and the Co-op.

The Law Society has spoken out to warn the Government that proposed changes to the way 'no-win, no-fee' legal arrangements work may deny the poor access to justice.

The House of Lords is currently debating changing the law to put an end to what has been dubbed 'the compensation culture'. However, the Law Society warns that wholesale changes to the law would penalise victims of accidents, fraud and negligence.

The current law has been widely criticised for fostering a culture of legal compensation claims for the slightest problem or mishap. This has largely been the case since legal reform in the late 1990s which brought in no-win, no-fee legal services to replace legal aid in a wide variety of cases.

Everyone has family heirlooms and knickknacks that have been knocking around for so long that no one remembers where they came from and who they belong to, but when those items are found to be worth lots of money, suddenly memories of ownership come flooding back.

This was the case for Andrea Calland and her ex-mother-in-law Evelyn Galloway. Ms Calland sold an "ugly" vase at an auction in 2009 for £228,000 but, following a two-year legal battle, has been forced to hand over the money to Mrs Galloway, the rightful owner.

Ms Calland believed that she had either found the vase during her student days or been given it by her father. She then claimed that even if the vase had originally come from Mrs Galloway, she had abandoned it by not showing any interest for 18 years.

The nation's capital is lively, frenetic, bustling with an estimated 7.8 million people living in it so it's bound to be a noisy place. But in the last three years noise levels, and complaints, have been on the increase.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 there were 367,073 complaints about noise from the 33 London councils.

The noisiest area of London was Westminster where the council received a total of 39,794 complaints in the last three years.