Law Report: Case Summaries

THE following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Child

M C v Humberside County Council and another; FD(Bracewell J); 16 May 1994.

A secure accommodation order relating to a child was a draconian order as it affected the liberty of the child and the Children (Secure Accommodation) Regulations 1991 (SI no 1505 demonstrated clear limits on the power to restrict the liberty of the child).

Regulation 11 should be strictly construed to limit the power of the court to impose no more than a total of three months' restriction of the child's liberty.

Therefore, in care proceedings, justices had no power to order that a boy should be kept in secure accommodation for three months when, at an earlier hearing, they had made an interim order of one month, thereby ordering a total of four months' restriction of liberty.

Accordingly, the justices had exceeded their jurisdiction and imposed an unlawful term.

Carol Trimmer (D M Pontefract & Co, Hull) for the appellant.

Crime

R v Rasheed; CA(Crim Div)(Steyn LJ, Ian Kennedy, Mance JJ); 17 May 1994.

A request for a reward by a witness in a criminal trial might have a bearing on his motives for coming forward to give evidence and must always be disclosed by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service and by them to the defence; the positive duty to give fair disclosure did not depend on a request for disclosure and was not neutralised by the fact that the information could have been obtained in other ways.

A failure to disclose such information was an irregularity in the trial.

Michael Mansfield QC and Anne Shamash, neither of whom appeared below (Barnett & Co, Birmingham) for the appellant; Stephen Coward QC (CPS) for the Crown.

Value added tax

Thorn EMI plc v Customs & Excise Commissioners; QBD(Turner J); 22 April 1994.

VAT paid on supplies to be used in connection with business entertainment was excluded from credit for input tax by the Value Added Tax (Special Provision) Order 1981 (SI no 1741), art 9(1), but if a supply was used both for business entertainment and for other business purposes there was to be an apportionment between the eligible and ineligible use.

Credit for input tax was not totally excluded from a mixed supply because of some business entertainment use: cf Customs & Excise v Plant Repair and Services (South Wales) Ltd (1994) STC 232, where the opposite conclusion was reached without argument by the taxpayer which did not appear.

Kevin Prosser (Thorn EMI solicitor) for the taxpayer; Michael Kent (Customs & Excise Solicitor) for the Crown.

Land

Jordan v Norfolk County Council; ChD (Sir Donald Nicholls V-C); 11 May 94.

The wording of a court order requiring the council to replace all trees, hedges and shrubs on the site destroyed or damaged as a result of the council's operations on the site 'so far as reasonably practicable' with trees, hedges and shrubs of equal maturity was sufficiently general to embrace considerations of what was physically feasible and was apt to include financial considerations having regard to the nature and value of the site.

Jeremy Sullivan QC and Paul Stinchcombe (Nicholas Hancox, Norwich) for the county council; Francis Barlow (Mills & Reeve, Norwich) for the plaintiff.