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Nov 13, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
The justice system is in a state of crisis and needs a specially protected budget, a former lord chancellor says. Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who held office under Tony Blair’s premiership, argues that funding for the Ministry of Justice should be ring-fenced in line with health and education, in a bid to protect it from spending cuts.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
Nick De Marco KC, a sports law barrister at Blackstone Chambers, acted for Benjamin Mendy against his former club Manchester City. The club has been ordered to hand him an estimated £8.5 million in unpaid wages that were withheld after the French footballer was charged and then acquitted of rape last year. Being back in the employment tribunal for the first time in years, live streamed, with press joining.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
Amanda Clift-Matthews was counsel for Julian Washington, whose conviction for murder in 2014 in Bermuda was quashed last week by the judicial committee of the Privy Council. In the appeal brought by the Death Penalty Project (DPP), she led the court through evidence of systematic failures in the DNA evidence. The DNA evidence was unusually difficult and unravelling what had gone wrong was challenging and time-consuming. The DPP is now reconsidering 247 cases where DNA evidence was relied upon.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
David Lee, a senior crown prosecutor in the complex casework unit in the North East, prosecuted Thomas Kwan, a GP who admitted a plot to kill his mother’s partner with a fake coronavirus vaccine jab. Kwan was scheduled to be sentenced today. The defendant went to enormous lengths to plot what he thought would be the perfect murder. The planning, over several months, is the most elaborate I have ever known in an attempted murder.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
What is a woman? This now highly controversial issue will be decided in November by the highest court in the land. Five senior judges will sit in the quiet, restrained atmosphere of Court One in the Supreme Court in Parliament Square, impervious to the placards and banners of any protesters outside. The justices — three men and two women — will be led by Lord Reed of Allermuir, 68, president of the court and the UK’s most senior judge. He is undaunted by the task.
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Jul 31, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | James Morton |Robert Verkaik |Frances Gibb |Catherine Baksi
From a clutch of novels featuring a barrister on a hopeless case, the murder of a TV presenter live on-air and a historical detective story featuring a fictional mouse to a judge’s view of the workings of the Old Bailey, the fight for justice for women and an account of how one SS officer pursued high-ranking Nazis for crimes committed in concentration camps — there’s plenty to entertain you in our selection of summer legal reads.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
Michael Rawlinson KC of 12 King’s Bench Walk represented a couple who were refused compensation by BA CityFlyer for a delayed flight arising from pilot illness. The Supreme Court ruling in their favour paves the way for thousands of similar claims and gives guidance on EU and UK law post-Brexit. Trying to get a grip on the mare’s nest of the Brexit legislation and its interaction with the subject matter. Luckily I had two brilliant juniors who explained it … slowly.
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Jun 26, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
Judges are under fire after the Supreme Court ruled last week that Surrey county council was wrong to allow the expansion of a small oilfield without assessing the long-term environmental impact of refining and using the oil. Environmentalists hailed the three-to-two majority ruling as a landmark. But it also provoked outcry — the broadcaster Andrew Neil wrote in the Daily Mail that it was “yet another significant step on the road from democracy to kritocracy” — or rule by unelected judges.
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Jun 19, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Frances Gibb
Michelle Heeley KC of No5 Barristers’ Chambers in Birmingham and leader of the Midland Circuit prosecuted two 12-year-olds for the killing of Shawn Seesahai. They were the youngest defendants ever convicted of knife murder. We were dealing with very young witnesses and defendants so we had to make significant alterations to the court day and how we asked questions, all of which had to be approved in advance.
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May 22, 2024 | 
thetimes.co.uk | Frances Gibb
Adrian Darbishire KC of QEB Hollis Whiteman chambers acted for Auriol Grey, 50, who has cerebral palsy, in overturning her conviction for manslaughter. She was alleged to have caused a cyclist to fall into the path of a car by shouting: “Get off the f***ing pavement.”Until we came before the judge, Dame Victoria Sharp, everything for the client had gone wrong: she had been convicted and given a three-year jail term; refused leave to appeal her sentence, then to appeal conviction.
