Four cases on the criminal defences of insanity and diminished responsibility
Clinical Director of CMH entitled to raise concerns about discharge of patient M.C. v. Clinical Director – Central Mental Hospital [2016] IEHC 341 (High Court, Eagar J, 20 June 2016) An accused was found guilty but insane, but was subsequently reclassi …
Mark Tottenham BL | May 3, 2019
Personal insolvency arrangements
Under the Personal Insolvency Act 2012, new arrangements were introduced to deal with personal insolvency, so that debtors and creditors did not need to resort to bankruptcy. Under the guidance of a personal insolvency practitioner (PIP), a debtor may …
Mark Tottenham BL | May 2, 2019
Assessment of damages arising from failure to register title documents
Rosbeg Partners v. LK Shields Solicitors [2018] IESC 23 (Supreme Court, O’Donnell J, 18 April 2018) Property had been purchased in 1994. The purchasers’ solicitors had undertaken to register title documents in the Land Registry, but failed to do so. Th …
Mark Tottenham BL | April 29, 2019
Could Judges be replaced by algorithms
An algorithm is a set of rules to be followed in problem-solving operations. A computer programme can take a number of variable inputs, follow a certain set procedure, and yield a particular result. So it could be said to operate like a decision-maker, …
Mark Tottenham BL | April 26, 2019
Parkinsons’ Law of Delay
Originally published in 1957, Parkinson’s Law, or the Pursuit of Progress is most famous for the maxim in its opening line: ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’ In the work, C Northcote Parkinson addresses a number of oth …
Mark Tottenham BL | April 24, 2019
Citation of ‘free access’ case law – an Australian perspective
In Australian courts there is a longstanding convention (articulated by practice direction or rule in most jurisdictions) that the authorised report of a judgment is the version that must be cited in preference to other versions (such as unauthorised o …
Jenny Paglia | April 22, 2019
Developments in the law relating to ‘subject to contract’ correspondence
In property negotiations, it is usual practice for the solicitors on either side to mark the correspondence ‘subject to contract / contract denied’, and to end each letter with a formula such as: “No contract or agreement shall exist at law until such …
Mark Tottenham BL | April 18, 2019
An arbitrator’s jurisdiction: a law unto itself
Often when a dispute arises the court system is what springs to mind. However, the situation is often complicated when the parties have agreed that arbitration is the appropriate means to settle any differences between opposing sides. The lines between …
Ciaran Joyce BL | April 16, 2019
Compulsory purchase orders to facilitate private industrial development
When reading written judgments, it can be easy to forget that the legal struggle reflects a more personal struggle for many litigants. In Reid v. Industrial Development Agency (Ireland), the IDA had sought to exercise its statutory power to purchase la …
Mark Tottenham BL | April 2, 2019
Anonymisation of personal data in written judgments
It is common in written judgments concerning assessment of damages in personal injuries cases for the judge to describe in some detail the ailments that the plaintiff is suffering from. These are, needless to say, essential to the determination of the …
Mark Tottenham BL | March 29, 2019
