News Category: Commercial litigation

30 May 2019

Running a company with a family member is often an enjoyable way of being in business, but we all know that on occasion family members can fall out - even if it is just over who ate the last chocolate in the box at Christmas! Read more

20 September 2018

Issues often arise because the terms of a contract turn out to be unclear, or the contract doesn’t say what one of the parties had intended. It is an issue that frequently comes up for consideration by the courts, most recently in the Court of Appeal case of Bou-Simon v BGC Brokers LP in July 2018. Read more

25 July 2018

Japanese knotweed, the invasive plant which is notoriously difficult to remove, has been the subject of a recent Court of Appeal decision. Read more

14 June 2018

A commercial lease will often contain a break clause which will give the parties (most commonly the tenant) the right to terminate the lease early on service of a break notice. The exercise of break in a commercial lease is a fertile source of litigation as there is much which can go wrong with the apparently simple task of serving a break notice. Read more

21 August 2017

A new pre-action protocol for debt claims will come into force on 1 October 2017. This will apply to debts claimed by any business, including sole traders and public bodies, against an individual (which can also include a sole trader). The protocol does not apply to business to business debts. Read more

29 July 2016

One of the more recently posed questions in relation to Part 36 offers is, in cases where costs are fixed by section IIIA of Part 45 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), can costs, in excess of those that are fixed, be recovered by making or accepting a Part 36 offer? Read more

18 September 2015

One of the key aims of the CRA is to consolidate consumer legislation into one piece of legislation. The CRA pulls together various provisions from over eight different pieces of legislation, which governed consumer rights pre-October 2015. The CRA also updates consumer rights to reflect the both the ongoing growth in e-commerce and the more recent growth in the digital content market. Read more

23 July 2015

Chelmsford chip-shop owner Barry Beavis is, at the time of writing, pursuing his appeal to the Supreme Court in the final chapter of the saga ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis. Read more

20 July 2015

If you are a business selling goods, services or digital content to consumers, you are likely already aware that there are major changes on the horizon. This is due, in part, to the Consumer Rights Act ("the Act"), which will be coming into force in October 2015.  The Act is an attempt to consolidate and build on the myriad of existing consumer focused legislation. Read more

18 May 2015

The law provides protection for a business’ confidential information. This protection is often strengthened through formal confidentiality provisions in contracts or specific non-disclosure agreements. However, there can often be considerable uncertainty as to whether knowledge that an employee develops is confidential information protected in law, or whether it is the employee's own knowledge that he is free to exploit elsewhere after his employment. Read more