Legal Articles
- Can Minors enter into contractual agreements? In the UK, a legal presumption exists that entitles anyone to enter into a contract unless an exception applies. One of those exceptions is in the case of a minor. Since 1969 the age of contractual capacity for individuals has been set at 18 and reaching the...
- Statutory Wills fact sheet What is a Statutory Will? A Will made by the Court of Protection on behalf of a person (“P”) who lacks the capacity to make a Will is called a Statutory Will. The Court derives its authority from the Mental Capacity Act 2005. When should a...
- Court Takes Hard Line on Non-Cooperative Director In most legal proceedings, the parties are required to give disclosure of documents prior to the trial. Failures to give proper disclosure may lead to an application for specific disclosure, and/or a strike out application. A successful strike out...
- Can You Justify Your Service-Related Pay Scheme? The Court of Appeal has ruled (Wilson v Health and Safety Executive) on the correct approach to objective justification in equal pay claims that arise from service-related pay schemes which have a disparate impact on women compared with men. Mrs Wilson...
- Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules on Religious Discrimination Claim The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations, which came into force in December 2003, prohibit direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, victimisation and harassment in the workplace by reason of any ‘religion, religious belief or...
- Defective Compromise Agreements & Employment Law There are specific rules that normally apply when an employer enters into a compromise agreement in order to prevent an employee from taking action on a particular matter at the Employment Tribunal at a future date. A recent case has further illustrated the...
- New Corporate Options for Charities The Charities Act 2006 was given Royal Assent in November 2006. It gives additional powers to the Charity Commission to suspend or remove trustees from charities or to give specific directions for the running of a charity in order to protect it. The Act has...
- Mandatory Employee Consultations for Collective Redundancies The Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled that the obligation on an employer, under section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, to consult over collective redundancies extends to consultations over the reasons for the closure...
- UK Shareholders' Rights and Dividend Waivers When a company is set up, it is common to divide the shares in it in approximately equal proportions amongst the shareholders. Whether or not this proves to be the most effective way to split them in the long run depends on a variety of factors, of which the...
- Agreeing Contracts and Avoiding Legal Ambiguity Two recent cases illustrate the sense in taking advice on avoid contract disputes and commercial litigation from clumsy and imprecise language and latent ambiguities in legally binding documents and formation of contracts. Businesses frequently take a...
- Controlled Access to UK Labour Market for New Accession Countries Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union (EU) on 1 January 2007. From that date Romanians and Bulgarians have the right to travel throughout the EU. However, employers should note that the Government has decided to limit access to the UK’s labour...
- Duties of a Director in the Insolvency of a Company Core Duties A director is in a fiduciary position to their company. These duties include: a duty to act and use their powers in good faith, in the best interests of their company. a duty to exercise their powers only for the purposes for which they were...
- Fines, Companies, Company Directors and Proportionality A company and its director, who were originally fined £96,000 and £14,000 respectively following breaches of Health and Safety law, which led to the death of an employee The fines were reduced to £80,000 and £10,000 by the Court of...
- Enterprising Investment Made Simple Successive governments have recognised that the spirit of entrepreneurialism, though deeply ingrained in the UK’s culture, is not really very well supported by the financial institutions. In an attempt to provide more ready access to investment capital...
- Directors and Employees - When is a Director an Employee of a Company? When a company becomes insolvent, whether or not a shareholder and director is an employee, within the meaning of section 230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, for the purposes of a claim for statutory redundancy payment from the Secretary of State for...