Legal News

The European Commission has concluded its EU Digital Markets Act ( EU DMA) probe into Apple’s user choice obligations after i OS changes, featuring a redesigned browser choice screen and wider app removal options......

Expert Tooling and Automation Ltd v Engie Power Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 292 What are the practical implications of this case? The Court of Appeal’s judgment highlights central factors for commercial practitioners when examining claims involving half-secret commission, the scope of disclosure, the need for informed consent, and the part played by dishonesty... Relevance of Johnson v Firstrand: clarifying half-secret commissions and dishonesty Lord Justice Zacaroli referred to the leading and most recent authority on secret and partly disclosed commissions, Johnson v First Rand Bank Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 1282. The Supreme Court heard the appeal in April 2025, with its decision still awaited. Johnson confirmed that where a broker accepts commission from a finance provider without securing the buyer’s informed consent, the broker is in breach of fiduciary duty, and the payer’s responsibility is contingent on dishonesty. Following that analysis, the Court of Appeal drew...

See Q& A: Where an individual dies with UK nationality, domiciled in Scotland, with assets in England and Scotland, would their Will executed in accordance with the law of any part of the UK be validly executed under section 1 of the Wills Act 1963? What is the position as regards conflicts of laws as between England and Scotland? Which laws would apply to the succession of their moveable and immoveable assets situated in England and Scotland? Section 1 of the Wills Act 1963 ( WA 1963) sets out the overarching rule on the formal validity of a Will. In broad terms, a Will is regarded as validly executed if it accords with the internal law of any of the following: the country where it was executed; the country in which the testator was domiciled or habitually resident; or the country of which the...

In cross-border settings, the difficulty of enforcing foreign court judgments often drives international parties and practitioners to opt for international arbitration. With shifting tariff regimes and increasingly strained relations between the US and key trading partners, arbitration is poised to play an even larger part in resolving disputes. To clarify how awards are enforced, this article outlines the enforcement pathway so that those involved in cross-border disputes can plan ahead. It highlights three principal jurisdictions: the US, the People’s Republic of China, and Mexico... Arbitral awards are generally easier to enforce due to a strong framework of multilateral treaties that support their recognition and enforcement. The best known is the 1958 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, the New York Convention, with many subsequent instruments following its example. By contrast, enforcing a foreign judgment is far more...

Judge James Picken, sitting in the High Court, determined that Viet Jet Aviation Joint Stock Company had entered into a leasing arrangement with FW Aviation ( Holdings) 1 Ltd, a Fitz Walter Capital unit, for four Airbus aircraft worth US$111m, and did so 'with full knowledge of the nature and terms' of the transaction. He stated that for the structure, a Japanese operating lease with call option, to be workable, the carrier had to make rental payments on time. The airline is 'a sophisticated commercial actor with significant experience in aircraft financing', and it appreciates the rationale for these types of structures, Picken said. He went on to explain that early termination is 'very damaging' to the economic benefits expected by Japanese investors, therefore the termination clause provides for 'a sum compensating those investors for the reduced tax benefit and also a sum to...

What are the practical implications of this case? In DJP and others v DJO [2025] SGCA( I) 2, the decision underscores the need for arbitrators to exercise genuinely independent judgment. Independence means freedom not only from the parties, but also from influence arising out of other contemporaneous matters. Where parallel arbitrations share a common factual setting, there can be a temptation to replicate sections of reasoning; nonetheless, tribunals must show they have engaged with the precise submissions in the case before them and that their conclusions were not shaped by arguments ventilated in related proceedings with similar themes. For practitioners, the Court of Appeal offered notable guidance on: the distinctions between arbitration and litigation; and the content of the ‘apparent bias’ rule. It also reaffirmed that review of an arbitral award is not a supervisory process but one concerned with the integrity of the process, unlike an...

Suppliers of general‑purpose AI models, including Open AI, Anthropic, and Microsoft, witnessed the Commission set out its preliminary approach to implementing the EU AI Act’s pertinent provisions, preceding the publication, in due course, of administrative guidance on the matter itself. This initial approach was issued within a consultation intended to solicit input from AI companies, downstream actors, public authorities, and civil society on forthcoming GPAI guidance. See: LNB News 22/04/2025 37. The guidance will clarify core concepts in the EU AI Act, and this early approach offers a first view of how the Commission, which will also be the sole enforcer of the GPAI provisions, reads them. General-purpose AI models Among the first issues the guidance seeks to elucidate are the practical criteria for deciding when a model comes within the scope of the EU AI Act. In particular, the Commission notes that the key...

On the morning of 17 April 2025, EHRC chair Kishwer Falkner said the regulator is ‘working at pace’ to deliver a refreshed code of conduct this summer, following the Supreme Court’s ruling that clarified transgender people do not have a legal entitlement to enter single‑sex spaces that match their chosen gender. In response to the judgment, legislators and employers have similarly been urged to revisit existing legal guidance and related policies. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, stated that the Equality Act 2010 ( Eq A 2010) — the principal anti‑discrimination statute — and the Gender Recognition Act 2004 ought to be examined to ensure they prevent discrimination and do not enable ‘social engineering’. ‘ These laws were written more than 20 years ago, when the world was different. A lot of people are trying to change what the law means,’...

JSC DTEK Krymenergo v The Russian Federation No. 23-3330 United States District Court for the District of Columbia Crimean investment JSC DTEK Krymenergo, part of the DTEK Energy Group of Ukraine, operated the electricity network in Crimea and held a range of local assets. These comprised: Valuable equipment and moveable property Intangible rights, including licences and contractual entitlements Cash holdings and securities Although Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Krymenergo retained ownership until 21 January 2015, when Russia reassigned the property to Crimea and took possession of the company’s office premises. In February 2018, Krymenergo initiated arbitration for alleged breaches of the Russia– Ukraine bilateral investment treaty ( BIT) before a PCA tribunal chaired by Professor Juan Fernández- Armesto, with J. William Rowley KC appointed by Krymenergo and Professor Vladimir Pavić appointed by Russia. On 1 November 2023, the tribunal...

Dragados UK LTD against Port of Aberdeen [2025] CSOH 37 What are the practical implications of this case? This decision underscores the need for absolute clarity when drafting settlement agreements. Where an agreement concerns duties and liabilities connected to third‑party services while work continues, each party must, from the wording, be certain about the exact responsibilities they will carry in respect of those third parties and the circumstances in which they arise, as a consequence of the settlement drafting. Precision avoids costly misunderstandings and disputes over allocation of risk. What was the background? Port of Aberdeen (the defender and employer) appointed Dragados (the pursuer and contractor) to design, manage, and construct a harbour extension under the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract. Dragados then engaged Ove Arup & Partners Ltd ( Arup) as a design sub‑consultant pursuant to the ‘ Arup Existing...

The three-judge Court of Appeal panel has held that Hipgnosis SFH Ltd may pursue its claims in the High Court, as the intellectual property investment fund’s agreement to acquire rights in Manilow’s music catalogue stipulates that Hipgnosis can bring proceedings solely in England. Under the contract, Hipgnosis is restricted from issuing any of its claims, including those concerning the purchase price, in any forum other than England, the judgment confirmed. The court also found no objection to the appellant seeking negative declaratory relief regarding the purchase price before the English courts... Sitting with Justices Stephen Phillips and Richard Snowden, Justice Julian Flaux accepted Hipgnosis’s argument that the High Court had erred in implying that Manilow’s decision to litigate in Los Angeles deprived the English court of jurisdiction. The appeal turned on an asymmetric jurisdiction clause in the agreement which permits only Manilow to advance...

R (on the application of The Spitalfields Historic Building Trust) ( Appellant) v London Borough of Tower Hamlets and another ( Respondents) [2025] UKSC 11 What are the practical implications of this case? Many planning applications placed before a local authority are complex and, in practice, involve continuing discussions between the developer and the local planning authority that lead to alterations to the scheme. In such circumstances, it is commonplace for planning committees to defer determination to allow further negotiations to occur, with a revised scheme returning to committee for consideration at a later date. Those amendments arise from the ongoing dialogue. This judgment confirms that a local authority may lawfully include in its constitution standing orders that restrict the right to vote on an application deferred from an earlier meeting to councillors who were present at that earlier session. In effect, a...

High Court confirms parents can consent to child’s deprivation of liberty ( Blackburn With Darwen BC v BM and others) Blackburn With Darwen Borough Council v BM and others [2025] EWHC 745 ( Fam) What are the practical implications of this case? In practice, this decision carries the following implications: The case involved a fifteen-year-old who was not Gillick competent. Had Q been 16, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 would have applied, triggering a different jurisdictional basis for consent. Accordingly, a child’s age and Gillick competence are central considerations for practitioners to weigh carefully The holders of PR supported the local authority’s plan, and the Court was not invited to examine alternative routes that might have left PR in place under a care order. As a result, the judgment is chiefly pertinent to cases presenting a closely comparable factual matrix......

Approach to Consumer Protection The CMA has indicated in its Approach to Consumer Protection that, over the first 12 months of the new regime, it will: home in on conduct causing the greatest possible harm to consumers and showing clear and obvious breaches of the new rules continue to give priority to areas of essential expenditure, supporting people who are facing pressure on household budgets undertake wide-ranging and ongoing engagement with businesses and produce further accessible guidance to help firms comply with the law The CMA will concentrate on what it deems the most egregious infringements of consumer law, such as: high-pressure sales tactics directly aimed at vulnerable consumers supplying consumers with information that is objectively untrue automatically unfair commercial practices, including the additional unfair practice of posting fake reviews fees that remain hidden until very late in the purchasing journey contract terms that are plainly one-sided and unfair, including those that impose unfair exit...

Antitrust The application in Case C-60/25 Livronsa has now been published, an Italian national reference asking whether national courts must regard the Euribor manipulation evidence confirmed by the Commission and the Court of Justice as conclusive, and whether the ensuing competition restriction applies only to the derivatives market or instead to all markets that use the manipulated Euribor benchmark—see also the application The General Court has recently issued an order in Case T-413/21 Feralpi v Commission, an action lodged against the Commission for failing to pay Default Interest as required by the General Court in Cases C-85/15 Feralpi v Commission......

Natwest Markets Nv and another company v CMIS Nederland BV and another company [2025] EWHC 37 ( Comm) What are the practical implications of this case? The court’s ruling underscores the dangers tied to sophisticated financial deals and the premium on precise contractual wording. In substance, the court concluded that because the Deeds appeared to be indemnities (they were labelled as such) and adopted indemnity-style language, they were probably indemnities, in form and effect. The experienced professionals who prepared the documents were taken to understand the significance of those features, and accordingly these points carried considerable weight when construing the instruments. If the parties had not meant them to operate as indemnities, the drafters could, and should, have made that plain in the text. Form and language therefore played a central role in the court’s analysis. For the purposes of the questions the court was...

For adults-only websites offering pornography, gambling or alcohol sales, the position is straightforward: children must be kept out and stringent age checks are mandatory. By contrast, duties for other services are still being defined and are now seeing first-time enforcement. Under Regulation ( EU) 2022/2065, the EU Digital Services Act ( EU DSA), providers of online platforms that children can access must implement ‘appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors’. This wide-ranging obligation is due to be clarified by forthcoming guidance, with the Commission—responsible for enforcing the EU DSA—setting out what compliance entails. Although publication had been scheduled for this week, MLex understands the draft guidance has been postponed, with no fresh date yet confirmed. Alongside requiring platforms to limit harmful content, the Commission is weighing new rules in an upcoming consumer law that strike at the...

Christian Peter Candy v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 416 ( TC) C paid SDLT on the substantial performance of a contract, then later sought a refund on the footing that completion never occurred. In scenarios like this, a repayment is typically pursued by amending the return under section 44(9) of the Finance Act 2003 ( FA 2003). Nevertheless, as outlined in Candy [2022] EWCA Civ 1447, C was unable to obtain repayment by amendment because the change was made more than 12 months after the filing date of the return and was therefore time-barred (see News Analysis: Court of Appeal confirms that the standard 12-month period for amending a return applies to a claim for repayment of SDLT ( Christian Candy v......

The Julie Richardson Ltd and another v Oxfordshire County Council [2024] EWHC 3233 ( KB) What are the practical implications of this case? A local authority’s obligation to secure an adult’s care and support under CA 2014 may turn on the adult’s financial means. Accordingly, the charges for residential nursing care will, in some instances, be payable by the individual, and in others by the authority. The scenario presented in this dispute is unlikely to be exceptional. Residents at the nursing homes had been meeting fees privately until their resources fell to a threshold at which the authority’s duty to meet need arose. During that transition, the homes continued to deliver care while the authority undertook the required financial assessments. In consequence, there were intervals for which no fees were settled. The providers were left carrying the cost of care already supplied. To obtain...

The ICO penalised DPP Law Solicitors LLP for inadequate protection of personal data after identifying, confidential and legally privileged material on its network was stolen in a cyber attack and subsequently posted on the dark web. Intruders also obtained entry via a seldom-used admin account linked to a legacy case management platform during a June 2022 “brute force” assault—where credentials are guessed through repeated trial and error, over and over again. Using this account, they exfiltrated 32 gigabytes of data from the firm’s network, and, according to the ICO, the administrator account lacked multi-factor authentication at the time. The haul comprised court bundles, documents, photographs and video relating to the firm’s clients and experts instructed to give evidence in......