Mercedes-Benz is set to come up against a sizable legal challenge from a law firm representing UK customers of the car manufacturer for allegedly cheating emissions tests.A US-based firm representing Mercedes purchasers in the UK has filed particulars of the claim in the high court in London against Daimler, the owner of the manufacturer. The case alleges that Mercedes-Benz fitted cars with ‘defeat devices’ when being tested. These would artificially lower carbon emissions detected during the testing stage in order to pass emissions regulations. The claim also alleges that the carmaker has deceived regulators, lied to customers, and breached UK consumer law by marketing vehicles with falsified emissions data. While this is not the first kind of claim of its kind, it will be the first one in the UK involving Mercedes-Benz. This case comes off the back of a protracted series of similar cases, starting from ‘dieselgate’, which involved Volkswagen being found to have installed defeat devices. Other manufacturers have since been found guilty of such behaviour and have collectively paid out billions of euros through fines and legal action by consumers. Over 33,000 potential UK claimants have already been gathered, each in line for a potential £5,000 payout should the claim be successful. Mercedes-Benz were in court in the US for a similar case which resulted in a $700 million settlement to thousands of customers, which will provide confidence to those in the UK seeking such damages. The claim could amount to an even larger sum, with an estimated 1.2 million parties potentially being eligible to claim for damages, including private owners, lease owners, and fleet owners. The law firm managing the case has said that the theoretical value of the maximum payout could exceed £1 billion.Mercedes-Benz and Daimler vehemently deny the allegations and have stated that they will “vigorously defend against them or any group action”.

Messaging app WhatsApp recently introduced an option on its service for users to make messages disappear permanently for both sender and recipient after seven days. Government ministers, many of whom use WhatsApp and its rival app which already has this feature, Signal, face a legal challenge to stop them using these services when conducting government business. A coalition of transparency campaigners and university archivists have launched a legal challenge after concerns were raised that government officials could use these features in order to avoid accountability. They argue that it renders it impossible to perform legal checks to make sure any such messages should be archived for posterity. Foxglove, a campaign group, argues that ministers using these messaging features are undermining the democratic process by limiting accountability on themselves and data collected in the public interest:“The basic point is that privacy is for the citizen and transparency is for the government. This government is amassing more and more data on all of us and we have less and less information on them. That has the democratic bargain exactly backwards.”The ability to automatically delete messages over an encrypted channel such as WhatsApp has raised legal questions regarding where such messages fit in with a ruling ten years ago that stated that private emails and texts discussing government business were still subject to freedom of information requests. While someone can still be prosecuted for destroying messages pertaining to a freedom of information request, automatically deleted messages that are the subject of public interest and governance pose more difficult legal questions. However, campaigners argue that the active use of this format of messaging is equivalent to actively seeking to manually destroy important information and leaves users above scrutiny. They claim that this affects both citizens and future historians, citing legislation from 1958 which states that documents required for archiving are not distinguished between formats. This would mean that messages sent over apps pertaining to government business fall under archivable material and have to be preserved. 

Johnny Depp has been refused permission by the Court of Appeal to challenge a High Court libel ruling involving an article in The Sun. A judge ruled that the appeal had “no real chance of success” and so the application was refused. The actor lost his libel case against The Sun last year over a 2018 article that claimed that he assaulted his ex-wife, Amber Heard. Over the course of a three-week trial in July 2020, during which both Depp and Heard gave evidence, Mr Justice Nicol found that allegations that Mr Depp had assaulted Ms Heard were “substantially true” and ruled in the publisher’s favour.In a recent hearing, Mr Depp’s lawyers asked the court to consider new evidence, including the allegation that Ms Heard’s claim that she gave her divorce settlement money to charity was a “calculated and manipulative lie”.However, Ms Heard’s lawyers claim that many of the donations were carried out across multiple charities and anonymously, and that the accusation was entirely baseless. Regardless, representatives for The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers said that the new ‘evidence’ that Mr Depp would want to rely on wouldn’t have made any impact on the original libel trial. The final conclusion from the court of appeal seemed to agree and its decision was that the grounds for appeal were primarily made up of a skeleton argument and oral submissions, and would not hold any real prospect of success.  In this latest judgement by the Court of Appeal, the court said that the prior hearing was “full and fair”, and that Mr Justice Nicol “gave thorough reasons for his conclusions which have not been shown even arguably to be vitiated by any error of approach of mistake of law”. 

The parents of a young child on life-sustaining treatment recently ran into legal difficulties when seeking representation regarding their child. The parents were fighting to continue their baby’s treatment when they faced to prospect of going to court without legal representation when seeking to prolong the treatment. The child had remained in the neonatal intensive care unit since they sustained a severe brain injury during birth last year. The hospital sought five separate declarations, including that it was no longer in the child’s best interests to continue receiving ventilation as well as other life-sustaining treatments. The parents opposed the applications, however were not able to get access to legal representation. The case highlighted a significant discrepancy in the law around who is entitled to public legal funding and who is not. However, the parents were saved the ordeal of going to court alone after a barrister stepped in to help them. The parents were told by the judge overseeing the case that unfortunately, while parents whose children are the subject of a local authority application to take the child into care are given full, unfettered access to public funding for legal representation, they would not be. Parents who are fighting against a withdrawal of treatment from their child do not have such privileges or access to funding for representation, so they faced going to court alone. Mrs Justice Judd expressed her deep concerns for the family, stating that not only are cases like the one posed medically complex, they are also “as hard as is possible to imagine for the parents.”In this particular case, the father of the child works and his wages meant that they did not qualify for funding assistance when seeking representation. However, despite being over the threshold to disqualify them from funding, they were not able to afford representation on his salary alone. The Barrister, a friend of someone at the hospital, generously stepped in to offer their services pro bono to the family. According to Mrs Justice Judd, they ‘represented them with the greatest of skill and care, ensuring that their case was properly put before the court and taking the burden from them of having to do it all by themselves.”Despite the representation, the family were unsuccessful in their opposition to the application and it was ruled that the case was one, “where the burdens and possible suffering that continuing treatment brings with it outweigh the benefits of prolonging life”, and found in favour of the declarations sought by the hospital trust.Stay informed and learn more about family law and services that we offer.

A landmark crime bill has recently passed its second vote in Parliament. The Police, crime, sentencing and courts bill was passed by 359 votes to 263 and covers a vast range of changes to the enforcement and sentencing of certain crimes in England and Wales. While Labour MPs had been due to abstain on voting, they changed their stance after a highly publicised police intervention during the vigil for Sarah Everard highlighted concerns over police overreach during such demonstrations. Regardless, the bill looks set to continue its trajectory. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have largely and vehemently supported the bill’s proposals.The bill is a colossal piece of legislation and covers a wide range of matters regarding policing and sentencing but the main elements of it that are garnering public attention and criticism are those relating to public protests and demonstrations. Police chiefs will now be able to impose conditions on protests which relate to how they can be handled by authorities. For example, they will be able to unilaterally impose start and finish times, and noise limits. Should a protest not follow these conditions placed on them, they will be breaking the law and would face criminal charges and/or a fine. It will also become a crime to not follow restrictions that protestors “ought” to know about even if they did not receive a direct order from the police. Previously, it needed to be proven that protestors had been told to move on before it can be said that they have broken the law. The bill has been called an “all-out assault” on the right to protest by civil liberties groups. The practical implications of the conditions now able to be imposed on protests mean that power now lies more in the hands of police or other law making authorities to decide how and when a protest can take place or be broken up. It gives the Home Office unilateral authority to define what counts as “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to activities of an organisation”. Critics of the bill point to how the new powers given to the police and Home Office essentially give them the power to decide what constitutes a valid and legal demonstration or protest, a severe limitation to the right to protest.The maximum sentence penalty in common law for public nuisance, which the new legislative power falls under, is ten years imprisonment; a further arguing point for opponents of the bill when compared to much more lenient sentences for seemingly more harmful crimes than protesting. The bill also covers changes to sentences to increase jail time for more serious crimes, as well as increasing the maximum sentence for low level ones. 

Soon after the conclusion of a long, protracted dispute, Uber are expecting even more legal action as unions have said that the tech company continues to underpay its UK drivers. The app recently accepted, after a prolonged legal battle, that its 70,000 UK drivers were workers and entitled to rights such as a minimum wage and holiday pay. The main crux of the new issue is that campaigners say that Uber’s calculation of working time differs from the supreme court ruling. Whereas the court stated that this should be calculated between the times that a driver logs on and off the app, Uber have said that working time starts from when a job is accepted by a driver, a distinction that has massive knock-on implications as to what drivers can and can’t claim. Drivers still have to buy their car and fuel while not being paid when waiting for a ride, despite the company deeming them as currently working.Drivers have said that these boundaries could potentially cut earnings by up to 50%.Opposition primarily comes from the App Drivers & Couriers Union, who brought the original case to Uber. They claim that it is not the company’s right to unilaterally decide how the supreme court ruling should be applied. Uber’s response to the claims are that the supreme court’s definition of working times were based on their models and practices from 2016, which are no longer applicable. The legal provisions set on Uber as well as those which continue to be fought over will have knock-on effects to other similar ride sharing or private taxi companies, with other firms under pressure to raise benefits and conditions for their drivers as well. This is something that will likely be passed onto the customer with higher fares to offset improved payments to drivers. Find out more and read about employment law now.

A new pilot project announced in London will tag up to 200 domestic abusers released from prison as part of their release conditions and will run across all London boroughs. Offenders will be perpetrators of crimes such as sexual abuse, coercive control, physical abuse, harassment, and stalking. The Mayor of London’s office announced the pilot as part of a programme in collaboration with probation services which comes as a result of discussions with the Violence Against Women and Girls initiative. The National Probation Service have said that the scheme would provide an opportunity to utilise technology to better manage the risks to the past or current partners or children of offenders. The GPS systems will be used to monitor compliance with licence conditions and improve safety for previous or potential victims. The trial arrives off the back of warnings that incidents of domestic abuse have surged during the Covid-19 lockdown, with calls to helplines rising “week on week.” New figures suggest that almost fifty suspected killings may have occurred during the first lockdown.The charity Women’s Aid greeted the announcement of the trial, but have insisted that it needs to be led in partnership with charities, groups, and organisations specialising in safeguarding women and girls. They called for the pilot to have “survivors at its heart, as they are the experts in the continued and ongoing risk that an abuser poses.”We have a professional, dedicated family law team which is ready to help you with your case.

Three court of appeal judges have recently ruled that MI5’s policy of allowing agents to commit serious offences while gaining vital intelligence was legal. The intelligence agency has been on the receiving end of many cases and complaints brought by human rights groups recently.While the judges did hold that MI5 was not “above the law”, it concluded that any authorisation given to informants to commit serious crimes in proportionality were acceptable, per the agency’s guidelines. Government lawyers told the court in January that, in theory, MI5 officers could authorise an informant to even kill somebody if they were in an “extremely hostile situation.”The court’s justification for the ruling essentially boils down to the fact that the agency’s internal guidance as for when and how authorisation for crimes could be given limited what kind of damage could be caused. The guidance stipulates that authorisation can only be given where, “the potential harm to the public interest from the criminal activity is outweighed by the benefit to the public interest derived from the anticipated information the agent may provide”.While the Home Secretary has voiced her support for the decision, saying that it recognised the role that agents play in “preventing and safeguarding victims from serious crimes”, human rights groups have indicated that they will seek to appeal to the Supreme Court. Critics have cited multiple accusations of agents operating in Northern Ireland being accused of murder and torture, although formally bringing cases against them is a difficult procedure. MI5 defended the actions of informants and agents by citing policies which date back to the 1950s, which state that it is often necessary to allow informants the right to commit crimes providing that it is to stop their cover being blown. In a bid to safeguard MI5 and other intelligence agencies from future legal challenges, ministers passed a bill on 1 March 2021 to give authorisations legislative backing. While this passed in the Commons, the Scottish parliament rejected the bill.For more information, visit our page dedicated to criminal law.

Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have urged the EU not to ratify a planned investment deal with China until Beijing repeals national security laws and new restrictions on who can and can’t stand for elections. Twenty four activists wrote to the EU Commission while the trading bloc prepares to make the case for its deal to the European parliament before MEPs vote to ratify. Only then can it come into effect. One of the main recent acts which activists point to is the unanimous vote by China’s National People’s Congress to change Hong Kong electoral laws to state that only “patriots” can stand in elections. The activists argue that China are flagrantly violating their “obligations to the international community to guarantee the autonomy and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.” Specifically, the rewriting of Hong Kong’s electoral system flies directly in the face of the Sino-British Joint Declaration.Under China’s National Security Law, there continue to be mass arrests of pro-democracy activists and lawmakers across Hong Kong and, according to the letter to the EU, Beijing are “infringing on basic freedoms guaranteed both under the Basic Law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”The deal has already faced staunch opposition from members of the international community as well as within the EU. The letter will no doubt come as a welcome addition to the arguments posed by the not inconsiderable number of MEPs who would seek to not ratify this deal. They say that the deal puts the EU in a compromised position with China, as it’s advocating closer economic ties with the state while vocally condemning China’s suppression of democracy in Hong Kong. The US has already voiced its disappointment at the potential deal as well.However, those within the EU in support of the deal claim that it improves market access for EU companies and provides levers to make future demands on human rights. They posit that economic disconnect from China is unrealistic and the best option to illicit change is to compete on more equal terms with them. The activists rebuke this, saying that the EU will never have greater leverage over China that it currently does.Between continued unrest in the region and the new visa outreach to Hong Kong residents, we are seeing more and more people emigrating from Hong Kong to the UK. If you or anyone you know is looking to make the move, our team of immigration solicitors are second to none. We hold some of the most sought after qualifications and accreditations in the sector and would be delighted to advise you on your legal standing within the immigration system.