Barclays Bank p.l.c. v, O'Brien1CIBC Mortgages p.l.c.v. Pitt2presented the House of Lords with an opportunity to consider when a creditor should be prevented from eforcing a transaction against a person who entered int it as a result of the undue influence or misreprentation of another. Lord Browne-Wilkinson's declared objective was to restate the law on this point “in a form which is principled, reflects the current requirements of society and provides as much certainty as possible”.3 Whether he achieved these three aims is a question on which commentators disagree. According to one, his Lordship proved himself “a master of the judicial art”4 by achieving all three.5 Another has argued that his judgments “may give rise to as much confusion as this difficult area has already witnessed”6 and that, in his efforts to attain the second of his goals, he overlooked the first and the third.

IT IS now 18 years since the Law Commission Report which led to the introduction of the reformed R.S.C., Order 53,1 the procedure which still governs all applications for judicial review in England and Wales. The Law Commission has now returned to the field with its 1994 Report entitled Administrative Law: Judicial Review and Statutory Appeals.2 During the interval between the two reports, judicial review has undergone enormous change in terms of both thequantity of claims brought3 and the substantive and adjectival developments in the jurisprudence. Moreover, important additions to the reform agenda have been made from a variety of sources.4 The Law Commission's latest contribution could thus hardly be better timed.

IN Lungowe v Vedanta Resources Plc [2016] EWHC 975 (TCC), the High Court allowed a claim to be heard in England against parent company incorporated in England and its foreign subsidiary in relation to the overseas subsidiary's operations. The judge considered whether the claim against the English-domiciled defendant could be stayed on the basis of forum non conveniens, and whether jurisdiction could be established over its foreign subsidiary as a necessary and proper party to the case. The overall analysis of the judgment suggests that (1) the claims against the parent company in relation to the overseas operations of the foreign subsidiary can be heard in the English courts and (2) the existence of an arguable claim against the English-domiciled parent company also establishes jurisdiction of the English courts over the subsidiary even if the factual basis of the case occurs almost exclusively in the foreign state.

By equitable concession a shareholder may bring a representative action, ostensibly on behalf of himself and fellow shareholders, but in reality for the company, to permit corporate recovery against persons in a position of control who have perpetrated a fraud on the company. Such “derivative” actions form an exception to the axiom, expressed as one aspect of the rule in Foss v. Harbottle, that in matters of corporate recovery the proper plaintiff is the company itself.

I hope that I shall not either dissatisfy you or disappoint you in what I have got to say to-night, in offering you some observations on the Permanent Court of International Justice, but I confess that it is a pleasure to me to feel that I can cast away all such taints and disadvantages as may attach to a member of the Government, and speak to you as a Trinity man.

The doctrine of anticipatory breach was officially first established in a famous 1853 case, enabling a party to a contract to terminate it and sue for damages immediately after the other party refused to fulfil its part, despite the fact that the time stipulated for the latter's performance had not arrived. The doctrine has since been employed by counsel as a vehicle to justify a premature termination of contract in numerous legal battles. It was perhaps with the confidence in such vast general judicial experience that Lord Wilberforce once declared that the rules determining the existence of an anticipatory breach constituted “one of the more perspicuous branches of the law of contract”. With due respect, however, his Lordship seemed to be too optimistic on that occasion. When one takes a closer look at decided cases, it is hard to resist the conclusion that this area of law is still plagued with inconsistency, uncertainty and incoherence. Where the existence of an anticipatory breach of contract is in dispute, the courts have been applying two distinct approaches to fact patterns of the same nature. A major cause for this disparity is the courts' failure to realise in some cases that the cases they are dealing with are anticipatory breach cases and should be subjected to a uniform test. This cognitive failure is largely attributable to the fact that, although the term “anticipatory breach” itself was criticised on several occasions, little has been done to illuminate the very nature of an anticipatory breach of contract and what distinguishes it from what we normally conceive of as a breach of contract, namely an “actual breach” of contract. Another cause of the disparity of the courts' approaches is perhaps English law's case-to-case, piecemeal methodology. Pragmatic though this methodology may be, it is sometimes necessary to amass the fragmented pieces and fit them into a clear and stable conceptual structure, thereby bringing the law to a higher level of generalisation. It is the purpose of this article to propose a general legal test for all types of anticipatory breach on the basis of an exposition of its nature and hopefully to bring order, rationality and unity to this chaotic area of law.

This article presents the novel view that “inclusion into seclusion” and “public disclosure of embarrassing facts” (“misuse of private information” (“MOPI”) in the UK), which both the academic commentary and US case law treat as two separate legal actions, occupy the same conceptual space. This claim has important practical ramifications. No further development of the law is required to realise an actionable intrusion tort as part of the UK's MOPI tort. The argument is defended in doctrinal and theoretical terms and by reference to both UK and US law. It is presented in three forms: first, in negative terms, that the orthodox distinction between the two claims (informational privacy and intrusion) is unsustainable; second, in positive terms, that both guard against the same wrong (unwarranted privacy invasion) and the same harm (mental distress), in a way that is distinctive from other privacy actions and legal claims based upon the autonomy value; finally, in pragmatic terms, that MOPI's mature jurisprudence is sufficiently flexible and dynamic to recognise intrusion-only claims using its existing legal framework.

This article uses the advancements in artificial intelligence as the starting point for consideration of the role of human inventorship in European patent law. It argues that human inventorship is a necessary condition for the existence of an invention and inventive step, with the result that only products of human inventorship merit European patents. It identifies failings of European authorities to reflect this adequately in their approaches to determining patentability. Finally, it recommends recognising human inventorship as an implicit patentability requirement being an aspect of the statutory requirements for an invention and inventive step and extending applicant's disclosure duties correspondingly.

The companion 1763 tort cases of Huckle v Money and Wilkes v Wood hold a mythical status in the Anglo-American common law imagination. Few modern accounts of the doctrinal origins of exemplary (or punitive) damages omit reference to them. This article contends that the assumption that these two cases combined to provide damages above and beyond compensation a positive basis at English common law is misconceived. Set back into their historical context, it shows that their true significance is at odds with the decidedly lawmaking significance often ascribed to them by modern judges and scholars alike.

The shape of the unfair prejudice remedy—sections 459–461 of the Companies Act 1985—owes much to the influence of Lord Hoffmann, for throughout his judicial career he has played a leading role in the remedy's development (see, e.g., Re a Company [1986] B.C.L.C. 376 and Re Saul D. Harrison & Sons plc [1995] 1 B.C.L.C. 14 (C.A.)). In Re a Company (No. 00709 of 1992) [1999] 1 W.L.R. 1092 (O' Neill v. Phillips), the House of Lords considered sections 459–461 for the first time. In a strong, wide-ranging judgment, Lord Hoffmann delivered the opinion of the House. By reasserting the remedy's contractual focus, he sought to bring greater certainty to its operation; in so doing, he signals a restriction in the remedy's ambit.

The value of civility is grounded upon acceptance of the legitimacy of moral disagreement and the need for mutual respect and cooperation in the face of such disagreement. The distinction between rights and goods plays a fundamental role in the form of civility espoused by liberal society. Current models of constitutional rights and proportionality, in a variety of ways, erode that distinction and thereby place the liberal model of civility in jeopardy.

Recently, addicts of the Foss v. Harbottle rule have had plenty to think about. First there was the epic battle in Prudential Assurance Co. Ltd. v. Newman Industries Ltd. (No. 2), culminating in the mangling of Vinelott J.'s mammoth judgment by the Court of Appeal. While this was in train, there was Cane v. Jones and before it was fully reported there came the decision of Megarry V.-C. in Eastmanco (Kilner House) Ltd. v. G.L.C. One disappointing feature of this feast of litigation is that it should end with so many basic issues seemingly at large. According to Megarry V.-C, it “may be” that the test of whether an individual can sue about an intracorporate dispute “will come to be” whether an ordinary resolution of the shareholders can validly carry out or ratify the acts in question. It was clear, however, that the “justice” of the case was not a practical test of an individual's competence to sue, but merely a reason for creating exceptions to the basic rule.”

The position of applicants for judicial review has been drastically ameliorated by the new Order 53. It has removed all those disadvantages, particularly in relation to discovery, that were manifestly unfair to them and had, in many cases, made applications for prerogative orders an inadequate remedy if justice was to be done … Now that those disadvantages to applicants have been removed and all remedies for infringements of rights protected by public law can be obtained upon an application for judicial review, as can also remedies for infringements of rights under private law if such infringements should also be involved, it would in my view as a general rule be contrary to public policy, and as such an abuse of the process of the court, to permit a person seeking to establish that a decision of a public authority infringed rights to which he was entitled to protection under public law to proceed by way of an ordinary action and by this means to evade the provisions of Order 53 for the protection of such authorities.

(per Lord Diplock in O'Reilly v. Mackman [1983] 2 A.C. 237 at 285)

It is five years since Lord Hoffmann delivered the advice of the Privy Council in Attorney-General of Belize v Belize Telecom Ltd. In that landmark decision, Lord Hoffmann assimilated contractual interpretation and implication with the result that when implying a term in fact the court must ask a single question: “is that what the instrument, read as a whole against the relevant background, would reasonably be understood to mean?” It might have been thought that five years was enough time for the English courts to come to terms with this approach. Belize is regularly cited in the courts, but the judges appear to struggle with its application. There remains uncertainty as to the roles (if any) to be afforded to the traditional “business efficacy” and “officious bystander” tests, and the requirement of “necessity”. This article seeks to re-evaluate Belize five years on. It concludes that Belize provides a doctrinally coherent and workable basis for identifying and giving effect to the intention of the parties through the implication of terms. However, the article questions whether it remains necessary, or even helpful, to continue to make reference to tests based on “business efficacy” or the “officious bystander”, as the tests distract from the central idea advanced by Lord Hoffmann and have led to uncertainty in its application.