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When the seller of a property allowed the purchaser to start the groundworks for developing it prior to the exchange of contracts for sale, she would not have expected HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to assert that this invalidated a claim to the principal...

When the publisher of Ideal Home (IH) magazine brought a legal action for infringement of its trade mark against the Ideal Home Show (IHS), the response was a counterclaim by IHS that IH's trade mark was invalid. Both brands had successfully traded alongside...

In a case which vividly illustrates the difficulties faced by leaseholders wishing to take over management of their homes, residents of a block of luxury riverside apartments hit a fatal stumbling block when the Upper Tribunal (UT) ruled that the building...

When a man's wife died, his decision to execute a new will less than a month later led to a legal challenge. Two earlier wills had made his wife his principal beneficiary and provided that, should she predecease him, his estate would go to her family. The...

All forms of tax planning need to be carried out with great care. However, even when care is taken, unforeseen results can sometimes occur, as a recent tax case shows. The outcome was that a company's successful claims for more than £38 million in...

In a ruling which underlines that mental illness does not necessarily equate to legal incapacity, the Court of Protection recently refused to open the way for doctors to perform a life-saving leg amputation on a woman with paranoid schizophrenia who had...

When a tenant left the premises it had occupied but did not comply with its obligations under the lease to put the property back into a good state of repair, the landlord sued the tenant to recover the cost of the repairs it was necessary to carry out. In...

A family judge has hailed the miraculous benefits of sitting down to a 'nice cup of tea' after this played a central role in healing a bitter ten-year rift between parents of twin boys and enabled them to agree a shared residency order. The former couple,...

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has issued an important judgment relating to trade marks , overturning an earlier decision. The dispute related to the use of a wolf's head as a trade mark. A community trade mark application was filed in...

In resolving a bitter family dispute, the High Court had no hesitation in finding that the signature on a woman's purported last will was a clever forgery designed to cheat a favoured relative of his rightful inheritance. The will was said to have been...