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All articles
- Access all Areas: The Ghost of Woolworths
Victor Smith ponders a recent case which suggests that the 2002 decision in Woolworths, may still be unduly influential despite the Court of Appeal having declared it to be wrongly decided. First published in the New Law Journal with Part 1 at (2023) 173 NLJ 8011 p9 and with Part 2 at (2023) 173 NLJ 8012 p11. - De Montfort University: My Student Experience and the Law
Victor Smith recounts his three-year attempt to get a recalcitrant university to comply with its procedures and honour its promises. Court finds DMU handled student complaint "badly" but student effectively penalised in costs. - Double Jeopardy: Autrefois & Beyond
Victor Smith examines the circumstances in which it would offend the court’s sense of justice and propriety to proceed with a prosecution when the accused has faced that same or similar peril before. In such cases the defendant may plead autrefois or, where that is not applicable, seek a stay of the proceedings as an abuse of process of the court. First published in the New Law Journal at (2021) 171 NLJ 7933, p13 with Part 2 at (2021) 171 NLJ 7935. - Guilt from Circumstance: A Matter of Inference
Victor Smith looks at when inference can result in conviction. A shorter version was previously published in the New Law Journal at (2019) 169 NLJ 7865, p12. - Amending the Defendant’s Name
Victor Smith traces the origins of the principle that a charge cannot be amended by substituting one defendant for another and considers the Platinum case which highlights the distinction between entities that are truly different and the same defendant who has merely been misnamed. First published as “Who’s in the dock?” at (2018) 168 NLJ 7813, p11 with Part 2 at (2018) 168 NLJ 7814, p11. - No Case for Unsworn Evidence in Due Diligence Defence
The case of Havering (LB of) v Masters raises questions about the evidence which can or should be included in a case stated, the extent to which the court can look at other evidence and the relevance of due diligence and unsworn evidence to a submission of no case to answer. Victor Smith argues that the Divisional Court fell into a series of errors. First published in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly (2017) 181 JPN 419. - Aggressive Commercial Practices, Confidentiality Clauses, Consent Connivance and Due Diligence.
Whether a confidentiality clause could amount to an aggressive commercial practice and whether a director could connive therein by sending out such a clause in a letter drafted by a solicitor, fell to be decided in the recent case of R v Waters. First published as "Aggressive Commercial Practices" in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly (2016) 180 JPN 736. - Commercial Practice and a Single Consumer
The purposive approach to the interpretation of the Europe spawned CPUTR need not suffer from an inability to apply the Interpretation Act 1978. First published in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly (2016) 180 JPN 310. - Computing Time and Date - When the Courts Can’t Count
Knowing how to calculate when a statutory time limit expires can be crucial yet, even when the courts purport to apply the correct rule, Victor Smith has found they do not always get it right.
First published in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly (2015) 179 JPN 796. - Food Label Can Mislead Despite Accurate Ingredients List
Producers who previously thought an accurate ingredients list would allow them to make misleading marketing claims elsewhere on a food label must now think again as a result of Teekanne's effect on the fifteen year reign of Darbo. First published as "Misleading Labelling Offences" in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly (2015) 179 JPN 604.