The Gazette 1971

CURRENT LAW DIGEST In reading these cases note should be taken of the difference between English and Irish statute law. Administrative Law The hearing of an appeal at quarter sessions from an adminis- trative decision by a committee of a local authority refusing a permit for an amusement arcade is a complete rehearing. Broadly speaking, local decisions are best taken by local people; but if they are to be free from any form of check, justice and fair dealing can suffer. A council and its com- mittees are entitled to agree on a policy provided they do not impose it inflexibly. This was stated when their Lordships, the Master of the Rolls dissenting, dismissed an appeal by Norwich Corporation from the Divisional Court (Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Jus- tice, Mr. Justice Cooks and Mr. Justice Fisher) which upheld the decision of the Recorder of Norwich (Mr. R. M. O. Havers, Q.C.), allowing the appeal of Sagnata Investments Ltd., of Magdalen Street, Norwich, against the refusal of the Licensing Committee of Norwich Corporation to grant a permit for the provision of amusements with prizes at Old Post Office Court, Norwich, following an application under the Betting and Lotteries Act, 1963. [Sagnata Investments Ltd. v Norwich Corporation; The Times, 12th May 1971.] Bankruptcy The Court, in considering whether to rescind a receiving order made against a bankrupt solicitor, held that the exceptional circumstances that give a Court a discretion to rescind under Section 108 (1) of the Bankruptcy Act> 1914, must be such as are closely analogous to the expressly recognised circumstances under the statute which enable a bankruptcy to be halted or annulled. The decision in re Izod (1898, 1 Q.B. 241) in which a receiving order was rescinded in exceptional circumstances and where the statutory requirements were not complied with, was a special case and did not lay down any general rule. [Ex parte the Official Receiver and the Debtor; The Times, 27th May 1971.] Betting Tax The Court of Appeal (The Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Salmon and Lord Justice Megaw) dismissed an appeal by Mr. W. Sherman, director of a bookmaking company, of Penarth, Glamorgan, from the decision of Mr. Justice Paull (The Times, November 21st) that general betting duty was payable to the Customs and Excise Commissioners under Section 12 (5) of the Finance Act, 1966, not only on the amount of the bettor's stake but also on a service charge imposed by the bookmaker to cover "all duties, levies and S.E.T." [Sherman v Customs and Excise Commissioners; The Times, 25th May 1971.] Companies - Section 332 (1) provides: "If in the course of the winding up of a company it appears that any business of the company has been carried on with intent to defraud creditors of the com- pany or creditors of any other person or for any fraudulent purpose, the Court, on the application of the . . . liquidator . . . of the company, may, if it thinks proper so to do, declare that any persons who were knowingly parties to the carrying on of the business in manner aforesaid shall be personally responsible, for all or any of the debts or other liabilities of the company as the Court may direct." [In re Maidstone Building Provisions Ltd.; The Times, 1st May 1971.] Contract The object of interim certificates in building contracts is to provide the cash available for the contractor or the sub- contractor to get on with his work. The only sums which can be deducted from the certificateare liquidated and ascertained sums which are known to be due This was st.ated when their Lordships allowed an appeal by the plaintiffs. [Dewneys Ltd. v F. G. Minter Ltd. and Another; The Times, 29th April 1971.]

The Court of Appeal, in what was stated to be in the nature of a test case, decided that Dutch law was the proper law of a contract of employment used extensively for recruiting Euro- pean personnel for overseas rig drilling operations when they dismissed an appeal by Mr. G. W. Sayers of Easingwold, Yorkshire, from the decision of Mr. Justice Bean on a prelim- inary issue as to the proper law of the contract made between him and International Drilling Co., N.V., a Netherlands com- pany and a subsidiary of Offshore Drilling Co., of Texas, United States. By Clause 8 of the formal printed contract, which was in English the employee agreed to accept benefits under the employing company's "compensation program" in lieu of any other claims, rights, demands or actions, whether at common law or under the statutes of the United Kingdom or any other nation which might accrue to him by virtue of accidental onjury. [Sayers v International Drilling Co., N.V.; The Times, 11th May 1971.] His Lordship held that where a loan was knowingly made in order to discharge an existing loan which was wholly or parti- ally illegal, the loan was itself tainted with illegality. [Spector v Agada; The Times, 28th May 1971.] See under Copyright; Stovin-Bradford v Volpoint Properties and Another; The Times, 25th May 1971. Constitution The Court will not at the suit of a subject grant declarations which impugn the Crown's prerogative to enter into the Treaty of Rome, even though it may commit the executive irreversibly to joining the Common Market and mean some sharing of the sovereignty of these islands with others. The Court's function is to interpret political decisions when they have been embodied in Acts of Parliament; and though the present accepted legal theory is that no Parliament can bind its successors, political realities may not always necessarily accord with that legal theory. [Blackburn v Attorney General; The Times, 11th May 1971.] Copyright Where an architect agrees to prepare plans and drawings for work on an existing building for a client, for the purpose of obtaining permission, at a fee substantially less tha,n the R.I.B.A. scale fees, the contract is subject to an implied term that the client may not use the plans or any distinctive feature of them to erect the buildings. If he does so use them the architect is entitled to sue him for damages for infringement of his copyright. [Stovin-Bradford v Volpoint Properties Ltd. and Another; The Times, 25th May 1971.] Crime A scrap metal dealer complies with Section 2 (2) (a) of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act, 1964, if he enters a fair description of the scrap metal in question in the book required to be kept by him under Section 2 (1) of the Act. The Court dismissed an appeal by the prosecutor against the dismissal by county justices at Newport, Monmouthshire, last September of an information against A. Cohen & Co. Ltd., scrap metal dealers, with a store at Crosskeys, that having received certain metal they failed to record the particulars, namely, the description required by Section 2, contrary to Section 2 (6). Section 2 provides: "(1) . . . every scrap metal dealer shall, at each place occupied by him as a scrap metal store, keep a book for the purposes of this section, and shall enter in the book the particulars required .. . with respect to—(a) all scrap metal received at that place . . . (2) The said parti- culars, in the case of scrap metal falling within paragraph (a) of the preceding» subsection are—(a) the description and weight of the scrap metal . .." [Atkins v A. Cohen and Co. Ltd.; The Times, 21st May 1971.] Justices did not err in law in deciding that a motorist did not cause "unnecessary obstruction" by leaving his car in a 24 foot wide road for 75 minutes on market day in Oswestry, Shropshire. 85