Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
In a landmark case for the UK, air pollution was found to be a factor in the death of a nine-year-old girl.
Southwark Coroner’s Court found at the conclusion of a two-week inquest that air pollution “made a material contribution” to the death of Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died in February 2013 following a severe asthma attack.
Coroner Philip Barlow, delivering a narrative verdict, said nitrogen dioxide levels near Ella’s home near the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London, exceeded guidelines set by the World Health Organisation and European Union.
“The whole of Ella’s life was lived in close proximity to highly polluting roads,” Barlow said. “I have no difficulty in concluding that her personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM was very high.”
Barlow said that the health effects of air pollution, and the risk it posed to children with asthma in particular, had been known for years, and that there had been a “recognised failure” to reduce the levels of nitrogen dioxide in the Lewisham area that possibly contributed to Ella’s death.
"There was also a lack of information given to Ella's mother that possibly contributed to her death," Barlow added.
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The ruling is the first of its kind in the UK and is likely to put additional pressure on the government to take action against illegal levels of air pollution in the country. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said that the conclusion of the Coroner’s Court a “landmark moment” and named pollution a “public health crisis”.
“Ministers and the previous mayor have acted too slowly in the past, but they must now learn the lessons from the coroner’s ruling and do much more to tackle the deadly scourge of air pollution in London and across the country,” he said.
A resort accident lawyer is a specialised attorney who works for people who suffered injuries in hotel accidents, guest room accidents, cruise ship accidents, and other related situations that are happening in and around resorts. The bottom line is that a resort accident lawyer provides a comprehensive service to those who have suffered injuries in various accidents and need legal assistance. Unfortunately, these mishaps can happen anytime, anywhere.
When your hotel is impacted by an accident, the hotel accident lawyer is your best ally. An unfortunate incident of personal injury or fatality occurring outside the premises of the hotel or resort and can totally spoil your joyful and relaxing vacation. A hotel accident attorney provides an important service to those who have suffered injuries.
Accidents in hotels can sometimes occur due to the negligence of hotel management. Most resorts and hotels have a code of conduct and established policies to govern their behavior. Hotel law firms can provide their clients with detailed legal advice regarding these matters. Moreover, clients can take their case to court if they are not satisfied with the results of the resort and hotel management's remedies.
Resort accident law firms represent clients who have suffered injuries while staying in a resort or hotel. These firms prepare litigation, if necessary, for their clients, in case of an accident. In some cases, resort guests slip and fall and get injured. Resort law firms can help you to prepare a claim. The representatives of these firms inform the client about their rights and obligations and, when appropriate, ways to secure compensation for their injury.
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These law firms also represent guests who have been hurt because of defective products found in hotels. Some of the common defective products found in hotels are razors, clothes hangers, curtains, glassware, dishes, china, cutlery, telephones, and electrical appliances. If these products are used with care and without damage, they can cause very little harm. However, if these products are improperly used, they may cause severe injury to the guests.
Some hotels provide extra facilities and services to their guests such as free breakfast, free snacks, free transportation, and other amenities. Many hotels also offer housekeeping and laundry services for their guests.
The suit can be directed towards the owner of the hotel, its manager, or a guest who has suffered from an accident. Next, there needs to be a legal evaluation of the claim. For instance, if there are several witnesses to the accident, it is important to get their statements to increase the strength of the case. The hotel law attorney can advise on the best way to handle the situation.
When a hotel client files a lawsuit, the law firm's main goal is to help him receive fair compensation for his losses. They work on this by gathering all of the necessary information about the incident, including the time and place of the accident, names of the guests, and their contact details. They also look into the rules and regulations that pertain to the hotel in question. This includes checking whether there were any safety measures that could have been taken to prevent the accident from happening. They then work on the case using their knowledge and experience in the field.
The lawyer's expertise in the field will ensure that the claim they make on your behalf is supported by strong evidence. They will also ensure that they give you the right advice. The hotel accident lawyer should also be able to provide fast and effective service to you so that you can receive the compensation that you deserve.
Within the blink of an eye, your life changed; you were seriously injured. Personal injuries can range from assault to malfunctioned products to car accidents. In today's day and age, danger is seemingly lurking around the corner, with the average person confronted with an increasing number of personal injury dangers. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration predicted that there could be a 50% increase in vehicular related deaths and injuries, from the present millions of annual injuries and tens of thousands of yearly fatalities. These injuries are tragic. At a glance, you may even believe that it was purely an accident. However, chances are, someone's negligence is to blame for the resulting injury. If that is the scenario, the responsible party should bear the burden of the medical bills and the expenses associated with the injury.
In this article, we will look at the process of a personal injury lawsuit.
Generally, personal injury law covers virtually any physical injury a person endures because of another's negligence or carelessness. Essentially, if you have been injured and it was not your fault, you may be able to bring a personal injury lawsuit against the party who caused the accident that led to your injury. Common types of personal injury lawsuits include:
Generally, personal injury law covers virtually any physical injury a person endures because of another's negligence or carelessness.
If you have suffered a personal injury resulting from the negligence of another party, you must file your personal injury lawsuit within the statute of limitations. While the statute of limitations varies from state to state, it is three years in New York. Although three years may seem like adequate time to fight this case on your own, you will be forced to confront the party's attorney alone; the other party's attorney's goal is to pay you as little as possible for your losses. Having an experienced personal injury lawyer by your side from the very start helps to level out the playing field. Your personal injury lawyer will advocate on your behalf, inform you of your rights (such as how everything you say may be used against you), research your case thoroughly, and make certain that you are adequately compensated. Even though you may have time to file your personal injury lawsuit, it is best practice to hire a well-versed lawyer as soon as possible.
After you have selected a personal injury lawyer, you will discuss the injuries and events leading up to and following the accident. From there, your attorney will build your case and conduct a thorough investigation, reviewing your medical records and injury-related expenses. Once the research and review stage is completed, your personal injury attorney will file a complaint with the appropriate court. Following this, there are two potential courses of action.
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Ultimately, every personal injury lawsuit is as unique as each personal injury accident.
Facebook will shift its entire UK user base into user agreements with its corporate headquarters in California, ending its current relationship with Facebook’s Irish unit and placing them out of reach of European privacy laws.
The move was initially reported by sources speaking with Reuters, with Facebook later confirming the details.
“Like other companies, Facebook has had to make changes to respond to Brexit and will be transferring legal responsibilities and obligations for UK users from Facebook Ireland to Facebook Inc,” the company’s UK arm said. “There will be no change to the privacy controls or the services Facebook offers to people in the UK.”
UK users will continue to be subject to UK privacy law, which currently mirrors the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), though it will no longer be governed by Facebook’s office in Dublin. The move comes on the heels of the EU’s announcement of stricter regulations for tech “gatekeepers” and how they handle data.
EU privacy law is currently among the world’s strictest, giving users a greater degree of control over what how much of their data they allow companies to access. US law favours the platforms themselves to a greater extent, with the 2018 US Cloud Act having made it easier for the US government to share companies’ data with UK law enforcement.
While the US government has recently launched antitrust lawsuits against big tech companies, lobbyists in the industry expect that incoming tech regulations will be more favourable to tech giants than those currently levied by the UK and EU.
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The UK is also introducing new measures calling for heavy fines on social media platforms that fail to adequately curb harmful content, with the potential to block such platforms from being accessed in the UK if they refuse to comply.
Drunk driving remains a problem in the United States. Every year, around 10,000 lives are lost due to drunk driving accidents, leading to thousands of lawsuits. It's important to know that not all DUI cases are filed properly. While it's true that they are rarely dismissed, DUI cases can still be challenged if there are problems with how arresting authorities handle evidence. Moreover, witnesses may also prove to be unreliable and the facts presented in court might not amount to a strong case.
If you ever get sued for allegedly driving while intoxicated, there's still a good chance you could get out of it. You only need to follow a few important tips:
You can't defend yourself from a DUI case on your own. As a matter of fact, you need an attorney who can represent you whether you go through court or a settlement. Considering the amount of information and evidence that gets scrutinised in DUI proceedings, it's important to work with a lawyer that has a proven background in DUI defence within the jurisdiction where the case is tried.
You can get arrested for DUI if authorities were able to show evidence proving that you were intoxicated. They can provide the results of your field sobriety test, breathalyser test, and other details contained in the arrest report. However, the arresting officer may overlook a number of factors like the effects of the medication you are taking or the weather at the time of your arrest (you may not perform well on a sobriety test on a windy day). At any rate, you and your lawyer can dispute such evidence if you are able to present the facts that authorities fail to include.
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If you were taken under custody for a DUI, the arresting officers should be able to read to you your Miranda Rights. This is so you can avoid making any statement that will be used against you in court. It’s part of basic police procedure no matter where you are in the United States. If the arresting officers fail to advise you on your Miranda Rights prior to your arrest, any evidence presented after you are released from custody will be dismissed.
Before the physical effects of intoxication take hold, mental impairment should be present. Hence, if you were pulled over and arrested for driving intoxicated, the arresting officers must prove that you were not in the right mental condition at that time as a result of intoxication. This is disputable if you were conscious, responsive, and conducted yourself in an orderly fashion before the arresting officers.
There are a lot more factors that can help you win a DUI case. It’s only a matter of knowing the facts surrounding your arrest and getting expert advice.
Despite the fact that they are a relatively common occurrence, car accidents are traumatic. The moments after such an event, no matter how minor, are filled with angst and confusion. There are certain common mistakes that many people make in the aftermath of an accident. Although most of these may seem rather minor mistakes to make, they have the potential to seriously undermine the personal injury case and limit the extent of the compensation package. If you find yourself the unfortunate victim in a motor vehicle accident and want to pursue a personal injury lawsuit. Here are five common mistakes you need to avoid:
Calling the police to the scene of a car accident is crucial. Thanks to their experience, the police will be able to investigate the incident, identify important witnesses, and gather evidence. In some instances, they may even be able to ascertain the cause of the accident. The formal police report that documents these findings is always an invaluable resource in a personal injury case.
Depending on the extent of your injuries, it is important for you to attempt to locate any witnesses to the accident and record their contact information. This is in addition to collecting the contact details and insurance information of any other parties involved in the incident. Another useful thing to do is to collect photographic evidence of the scene and your immediately visible injuries. Eyewitness testimony and visual evidence are strong, persuasive elements in a personal injury case and will certainly increase your chances of success.
In the aftermath of an accident, it is understandable for a person to be in shock. For some, this means they underestimate the extent of the injuries and jump straight into dealing with the problem's bureaucratic elements. Often people feel fine after an accident, but when the adrenaline subsides, the pain becomes more noticeable. Waiting too long before seeking medical attention could reduce the amount of compensation a victim can claim. It may also mean that there will be some difficulty in connecting the injuries to an accident.
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It is important to begin your legal proceedings as soon as possible. Depending on where one is based, there could be statutes of limitations in place that require a lawsuit to be filed within a reasonable time after an accident for it to be possible to claim compensation.
Some people believe that they can save money by filing a personal injury case themselves. However, hiring the services of a reputable personal injury law firm will increase the chances of success and save the victim energy. Hiring the right personal injury lawyer also allows the victim to have the peace of mind to focus on their recovery knowing that the case is in good hands. Personal injury lawyers are experts in the field and will know how to present the details of the case in an effective way.
Filing a lawsuit following a traumatic event is never going to be an easy task but by following a few simple steps you can guarantee yourself the best chance of receiving the compensation you deserve.
For the legal industry, the pandemic has led to major challenges regarding how business is performed and how collaboration is managed when all meetings have to happen over a computer screen. Unfortunately, it has also caused some firms to fall behind with their due diligence.
It’s easy to let things like fact checking, client confirmations, research, and court details fall by the wayside, since most lawyers and legal professionals aren’t in the office anymore. However, doing your due diligence for all your cases is more important than ever before in this new, digitally-focused era.
In truth, there are lots of challenges facing law firms these days:
While these challenges are difficult, they’re not insurmountable. They’re also not an excuse for skipping over your case due diligence in industries like IT, mining, and more.
If your firm’s partners don’t do their due diligence with case facts, your next trials could shape up to be disappointments all due to simple errors that ought to have been caught beforehand.
Many law firms are discovering that it’s tough to do their regular investigative due diligence from afar. Some information simply isn’t available over the Internet, and others might find that meeting people for information is tougher when the appointment can be brushed off as a Zoom call than an in-person meeting.
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You still need to discover investigative solutions that work for your upcoming cases. Hiring due diligence companies or other alternatives are all great ways to battle the difficulties surrounding remote-only work.
It’s also important that you maintain excellent communication standards across your firm. Emails and chat systems like Slack are valuable resources that should be leveraged as often as possible to simulate the in-office environment. When ideas and communication are flowing freely, your cases will be more likely to be accurate and due diligence will be easier to confirm across your departments or partners.
Some firms may choose to burn a little midnight oil and spend extra time on case review, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. This is time-consuming, but it often pays off in the long run when your cases are still solid, and when your firm doesn't suffer because of preventable errors.
In some cases, this may mean spending extra time in video meetings going over case details and investigative findings with partners. In others, it might mean spending extra time with clients to get stories accurate and make sure court plans are solid. Regardless, spending as much time as possible on case review will go a long way toward ensuring that each case you take is a success.
COVID-19 is tough, but the challenges it presents are achievable for any law firm that refocuses on quality and remembers the importance of due diligence.
Sandy Devine, Chief Commercial Officer at Factor, explores how firms have maintained continuity in a radically altered business environment.
Like a lot of companies, lockdown for my team and me meant a massive change in office locations. Overnight, we went from a handful of offices to 500, as we, along with our peers, decamped to our homes. For all of us this change has taken some getting used to, but particularly for professional service industries, like legal, where co-location – even with globally distributed teams – has been the norm, how we work. That is because as services companies, our offices are not just where we work, but a large component of the offering we bring to our clients. Physical spaces reinforce our business’s unique brands and allow us to develop cultures of excellence.
The last few months have furthered the perennial debate around the future of the office while, at the same time, shining a spotlight on what is necessary to make an office work. Not “just” the physical location, but the enabling model that underlies them. In the physical world, the elements that enable service companies to operate are natural to the point of invisibility. In the virtual world, this model requires more active attention to replicate. However, it is the only way you can deliver client outputs and outcomes at a pace and quality consistent with or exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels. How well your company has, and can continue to, rebuild this model will be the marker of whether you will be running back to the office as soon as it is safe to do so or considering long term changes to how and where you work.
While the enabling model around your business is everything that allows you to deliver your services, the last few months have taught us to focus in a few key areas, which ensured immediate business continuity and, long-term, allowed us to rethink our approach to offices:
As services companies, our offices are not just where we work, but a large component of the offering we bring to our clients.
For services companies, the security of client information is a top priority in remote working.
Our offices are not just where we work, they are where we laugh, learn, and share our accomplishments. In switching from physical offices, a key concern is not just about maintaining high-quality client output but instilling a culture to match.
Talent – Like a lot of companies, in the immediate lockdown our approach to our talent model was about trying to maintain support and development for our existing team members. This expanded substantially when, as lockdown extended, we realised we would be hiring a significant number of new staff remotely. Then we turned our attention to how do we interview, hire, onboard and develop, without any contact. This required rethinking approaches to ensure you find and retain talent, who you probably still have not met in person. For example, during the onboarding process, making sure that new team members get a chance to meet a broad variety of people outside their direct team helps them get a much better understanding of the business.
Knowledge - In my team, we already had an active calendar when we were in working in our offices that we could build on. We expanded our continued learning programmes with sessions for our teams on various topics - from the latest market intelligence on regulations to innovation in legal technology. By switching these sessions online, we were able to expand their reach, by allowing all our offices to join talks from speakers that would previously have been held in-person in individual offices.
Culture - Culture also requires a focus on wellness. Lockdown has been a stressful time for us all, but we have continued to connect with happy hours and quizzes. We have relaxed together with fitness and yoga sessions. You can help team members and their managers by training them in a more wellness-conscious way and allow for additional time off to help team members maintain their work/life balance, as the physical boundary between the two has blurred.
In switching from physical offices, a key concern is not just about maintaining high-quality client output but instilling a culture to match.
The work you do in your offices does not happen in a vacuum. A large part of physical offices, more specifically the clustering of service companies and their clients in the same areas, is the experience that this gives customers. There are so many things that are easier from this perspective when you are face to face: meeting with groups of client stakeholders to discuss a new project, workshops on approaches to problems and even just general relationship building. There are two things to focus on here:
For us all, a lot and very little has changed in the last few months. Processes, culture, and infrastructure built for physical proximity helped us make the transition to remote working and became even more critical in managing that work. We believe that in the future the pendulum will swing back from a purely virtual model to a hybrid model.
We may be craving the togetherness and dedicated space for work that an office offers, but we do not want that to come at the loss of the flexibility that we have had to balance work and life. This model will mean greater flexibility to work-from-home, but with physical presence to renew human social interactions and teaming that only comes from in-person interactions.
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With the right operating infrastructure in place across process, data, infrastructure, expertise, and culture, and with an ecosystem supporting delivery of a modern customer experience – this new hybrid model will thrive, evolve, and likely dominate. But without those things in place, we can expect a groundhog day of failed remote working models, where culture, connectivity and effectiveness will again be subject to a rapidly declining half-life.
The European Union is preparing to unveil a landmark pair of laws on Tuesday that will “overhaul” the digital market and the way tech giants can operate.
The Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act outline specific regulations seeking to rein in the power of online “gatekeepers” upon whose platforms thousands of companies and millions of EU citizens rely. They also represent the biggest revision of laws governing online competition in 20 years, with a focus on breaking up monopolies and making platforms responsible for the content they host.
Commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton will present the rules on Tuesday. "Our rules on digital services in Europe - the most coveted single market in the world - date back to 2000. Most online platforms hardly existed back then," the pair wrote in a joint op-ed for The Irish Times on Sunday.
"We need to update our toolbox and make sure that our rules and principles are respected everywhere. Online as well as offline."
Under the draft laws, tech firms could be fined 6-10% of their annual turnover for violating competition rules, with repeated violators potentially being banned from the EU altogether. Especially large firms with tens of millions of users would be designated as internet “gatekeepers”, making them subject to additional regulations.
The laws will also forbid companies from favouring their own services, a monopolistic practice that has been at the centre of antitrust suits concerning Google and other online giants such as Amazon.
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Further measures outlined by the draft laws include a mandate for companies to give EU regulators details of political advertisers on their platforms and the parameters their algorithms use to suggest and rank information. Companies will also be expected to inform the EU in advance of any planned mergers or acquisitions.
The draft legislation will be announced later today, with a final draft expected in the coming months.
The government introduced the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill to limit the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on small businesses. It made temporary changes to corporate insolvency rules in the UK. Schedule 10 of the Bill imposes limits on the ability of a creditor to issue a winding up petition against debtor companies. The new rules apply until 31 December 2020 to protect businesses that have been financially impacted by the pandemic from aggressive enforcement action taken by their creditors.
In the new year, creditors including suppliers, landlords and commercial lenders will once again be able to issue a winding up petition against their debtors to force the repayment of a debt. In this article, we’ll take a look at whether issuing a petition to wind up a debtor is likely to be the best way forward and discuss the various considerations that you should take into account.
A winding up petition is a legal notice issued by a creditor in a court with the intention of forcing a company into liquidation if a debt is not paid. A winding up petition usually follows a statutory demand for payment and is one of the most serious forms of legal action that can be taken against another business. If the debt is not repaid and the winding up petition is ignored, the company that owes the money can be forced to stop trading and its assets will be sold to repay the parties that it owes money to.
While a winding up petition can be a very effective measure to take against a debtor that owes you a significant sum, it may not necessarily be the most appropriate course of action given the current circumstances. Here are a few things to consider...
1. How can you serve the winding up petition on the debtor?
The winding up petition must be delivered to, or to use the legal term, ‘served’ on the debtor in a certain way. Failure to do so will make the winding up petition unenforceable. Non-essential businesses may be closed as the debtor and their staff may be working from home, which could make serving the winding up petition in the prescribed way problematic. If you cannot deliver the winding up petition in-person, it could be sent via email with a read receipt. However, you should do your research to ensure that the email address you send the petition to is checked regularly.
The winding up petition must be delivered to, or to use the legal term, ‘served’ on the debtor in a certain way.
2. How long should you give a debtor to pay before taking action?
This decision is very much a personal one that will depend on the particular circumstances of your case. If your debtor is a business that was forced to close or was in an industry that was hit hard by the pandemic, you may wish to consider delaying taking action to give the business the opportunity to recover and make the payment. The reality is that in many cases, forcing a company into compulsory liquidation via a winding up petition may only allow you to recover a very small proportion of the money you were owed. You may be better served by contacting the debtor to see if you can negotiate new payment terms, for example, by giving them extra time to pay or allowing them to pay the money they owe in instalments.
3. Could the winding up petition bring you negative attention?
Under normal circumstances, any negative attention associated with a winding up petition is likely to be felt by the debtor. However, the situation now is far from normal. Small and medium-sized businesses in just about every industry have experienced similar difficulties, and issuing a winding up petition at this stage may be seen as premature or insensitive by customers and other businesses in your sector. There are also adverse costs to consider. If a judge rules that your petition is inappropriate at this time and it is dismissed, you could be ordered to pay the legal costs of the debtor.
4. How long can you wait?
Typically, from serving the winding up petition to it being heard in court usually takes between four and six weeks. However, that depends on how busy the courts are. Given that the temporary moratorium on winding up petitions will be lifted on 31 December 2020, there’s likely to be a considerable backlog in court hearings. That could make the whole process much slower and delay your attempts to recover the money you are owed.
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5. Are there other options you could consider?
The options available to you depend on the attempts you have made to collect the debt to date and the reason for the nonpayment. If you have made exhaustive attempts to collect the payment and contacted the debtor many times but have been ignored, you may feel that you have no option but to issue a winding up petition.
However, if the debtor has been in touch and made genuine efforts to make the payment, other options may be available to you. For example, you could send a letter before action, which warns the creditor that your next course of action is to issue a winding up petition if the debt remains unpaid. Alternatively, you could choose to pursue the debt down the County Court route with the issue of a County Court Judgement.
Either way, there are options available to you, and given the current circumstances, it’s worth considering them all very carefully before you issue a winding up petition.
