Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
DLA Piper has advised hotel owner and operator QHotels Group on its acquisition via joint purchase agreement by China's Cindat Capital Management and UK investment firm Aprirose.
The two purchasers will each acquire a 50% stake in the company. The final purchase price was £525 million, making it the largest deal in the UK hotel sector so far this year. QHotels was sold by Bain Capital Credit and Canyon Partners, who have owned the business since 2013.
QHotels Group is a hotel management company, formed in 2003 and based in Leeds, which operates luxury hotels and spas across the UK. Cindat Capital Management is a Chinese private equity firm that focusses on overseas property deals. Aprirose is a UK-based real estate investment company with a portfolio of over £1 billion and has been active on the market since 1987. The DLA Piper team acted for the company and the management sellers on corporate and real estate matters arising from the sale.
Lead partner in the sale, Wendy Harrison (Corporate, Leeds), said: "We are delighted to have been able to achieve this hugely successful result for our long-standing client. We have acted for the QHotel Group since it was formed in 2003 and the finalization of this transaction is testament to the excellent relationship we have had with the client over the past 15 years. This significant transaction attests to the strength of our nationwide Corporate offering."
The DLA Piper team was led by Corporate partner Wendy Harrison with Real Estate partner Andrew Clarke, both based in the Leeds office.
(Source: DLA Piper)
A High Court senior judge has recently suggested that living wills should be compulsory, to set out a statement of wishes in the event of an incapacitating illnesses.
Mr Justice Francis said: "It should be compulsory that we all have to make living wills because these cases would be resolved much more easily.
"We all ought to be encouraged to tackle these issues.
"If there was some sort of campaign to educate people about these sort of things I think people would actually do something about it."
Here Annabelle Vaughan, Partner and Head of Court of Protection & Wills, Trusts & Probate, at Coffin Mew, comments:
“The question of living wills highlights a complex area of law, where the known wishes and feelings of individuals are put at the centre of decision making. A foreseeable problem with compulsory living wills is that individuals have a right to change their mind - there are bound to be disputes as to whether the recorded wishes are still current at the point where a decision needs to be made.
“On a practical level, it is difficult to envisage how compulsory living wills would be enforced and who would bear the cost of introducing any mandatory system. The current safeguards for individuals with Lasting Powers of Attorney have not eliminated financial abuse by attorneys; a far more robust system would be needed for dealing with something as fundamental as death.
“What one person would find tolerable if they needed life sustaining treatment may be vastly different from another. An arbitrary system would risk generalising the point at which people wish their lives to be ended.
“As Mr Justice Francis says, education is key. Recent cases such as Briggs show that knowing what a person would have wanted is compelling evidence. People should be actively encouraged to have these difficult conversations with their families, before the opportunity ceases to exist.”
Why should online platforms take more responsibility?
Online platforms are important drivers of innovation and growth in the digital economy. They have enabled unprecedented access to information and exchanges as well as new market opportunities, notably for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). With the surge of illegal content online, including online terrorist propaganda and xenophobic and racist speech inciting violence and hatred, online platforms carry an increasing societal responsibility in terms of protecting users and society at large and preventing criminals from exploiting the online space.
The Commission has been encouraging voluntary action by the industry to remove illegal content online through initiatives such as the Code of Conduct on Illegal Hate Speech Online and the EU Internet Forum. However, the important spread of illegal content that can be uploaded and therefore accessed online raises serious concerns that need forceful and effective replies.
To this end, the Commission is today presenting a set of guidelines and principles for online platforms to step up the fight against illegal content online in cooperation with national authorities, Member States and other relevant stakeholders
Following up on the European Council conclusions of June 2017, echoed by G7 and G20 leaders, the proposed measures constitute a first element of the Anti-Terrorism package announced by President Juncker. The measures also feed into the Digital Single Market Strategy and deliver on the actions announced in the Online Platform Communication of May 2017.
How quickly and effectively is illegal content taken down?
According to the latest reports, removals of illegal hate speech have increased from 28% to 59%. Whilst some improvements in the speed of removal have been noted, 28% still took place only after a week[1]. The Commission has agreed on a specific Code of Conduct with major online platforms; however, important differences across those platforms still remain[2]. In the framework of the EU Internet Forum tackling terrorist content, approximately 80-90% of content flagged by Europol has been removed since its inception. In the context of child sexual abuse material, the INHOPE system of hotlines reported already in 2015 removal efficiencies of 91% within 72 hours, with 1 out of 3 content items being removed within 24 hours. This shows that a non-regulatory approach may produce some results in particular when flanked with measures to ensure the facilitation of cooperation between all the operators concerned.
Why is the Commission proposing new guidelines?
Currently, a harmonised and coherent approach to the removal of illegal content does not exist in the EU. A more aligned approach however would make the fight against illegal content more effective. It would also benefit the development of the Digital Single Market and reduce the cost of compliance with a multitude of rules for online platforms, including for new entrants.
Today's Communication therefore provides a set of guidelines and principles for online platforms on the ways in which they can live up to their responsibility as regards tackling the illegal content they host. It also aims to mainstream good procedural practices across different forms of illegal content, to promote closer cooperation between platforms and competent authorities. As such it outlines a European approach to address illegal content for online platforms, combining the need for fast and effective removal of illegal content and prevention and prosecution of crimes with safeguarding the right to free speech online. This guidance will complement and reinforce the ongoing sector-specific dialogues.
What are the main actions expected from the online platforms?
The Communication invites online platforms step up their efforts to remove illegal content online and proposes a number of practical measures to ensure faster detection and removal of illegal content online:
The Communication also calls for broader transparency measures (including on the number and speed of take-downs), as well as complaint mechanisms and other safeguards to prevent the over-removal of content.
Furthermore, exchanges and dialogues with online platforms and other relevant stakeholders such as trusted flaggers, civil rights and consumer associations will continue.
Is the Commission planning on taking any legislative steps?
Over the next six months, the Commission will:
This will be completed by May 2018.
What makes content illegal at EU level?
Illegality is determined by specific legislation at EU level, as well as by national law – the Communication does not change anything in this respect. There is a vast regulatory framework at national and European level to determine what is illegal. It covers material such as incitement to terrorism, illegal hate speech and child sexual abuse material.
When it comes to content which is objectionable but not necessarily illegal, the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, for instance, asks video-sharing platforms to protect minors from harmful content. It is however not asking online platforms for the removal of this content, but for the creation of tools to allow users to identify and avoid minors being exposed to harmful content.
The guidance does not provide measures to be taken in respect of fake news, which is not necessary illegal. The problem of fake news will be addressed separately.
What are the current EU rules on removing illegal content online?
The e-Commerce Directive requires online platforms to act "expeditiously" to remove illegal content after they have obtained knowledge of it; it does not define what this means in practical terms. In the current legal environment, this usually has to be decided on a case-by-case basis depending on the specific circumstances, in particular the type of illegal content, the accuracy of the notice and the potential damage caused. Today's Communication calls for faster action where serious harm is at stake, for instance in cases of incitement to commit terrorist acts. On the basis of the information provided by online platforms (for instance through transparency reports), the Commission will explore the possibility to fix specific timeframes for removal.
How do the new guidelines complement other measures under the Digital Single Market Strategy?
This Communication is a non-binding measure that encourages online platforms to take certain measures to deal swiftly with illegal content online. It covers all types of illegal content, and as such it complements sector-specific binding measures as the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive and copyright directive proposals. In particular:
What is the Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech and how is it complemented by this Communication?
Illegal hate speech is defined in EU law (Framework Decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law) as the public incitement to violence or hatred on the basis of certain characteristics, including race, colour, religion, descent and national or ethnic origin.
The Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech is a series of commitments by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft to combat the spread of hate content in Europe. It was adopted on 31 May 2016.
Each of the IT companies that signed this Code of Conduct is committed to countering the spread of illegal hate speech online, and to having rules that ban the promotion of violence and hatred. When they receive a request to remove content from their online platform, the IT companies will assess the request against their rules and community guidelines and, where applicable, national laws on combating racism and xenophobia. They then decide if the content can be considered as illegal online hate speech and if it needs to be removed. The aim of the Code is to make sure that requests to remove content are dealt with speedily. The companies have committed to reviewing the majority of these requests in less than 24 hours and to removing the content if necessary. To ensure the Code of Conduct is having the intended impact, NGOs and public bodies from across the EU provide data on how quickly such illegal content was removed. The European Commission has so far published two such evaluations, with the last one showing some encouraging results (see IP/17/1471).
What is the EU Internet Forum and how does it contribute to the fight against illegal content online?
The EU Internet Forum, launched in December 2015, is one of the key commitments made in the European Agenda on Security. The Forum brings together EU Interior Ministers, high-level representatives of major internet companies, Europol, the EU Counter Terrorism Co-ordinator and the European Parliament.
The EU Internet Forum has two key objectives: to reduce accessibility to terrorist content online and to empower civil society partners to increase the volume of effective alternative narratives online. These two objectives have materialised into a referral mechanism with the participation of Europol to remove internet content; the creation of a prototype "database of hashes" developed by the internet industry to create a shared database to help identify potential terrorist content on social media and prevent its re-appearance on other platforms; and the establishment of a Civil Society Empowerment Programme, launched by the European Commission in March 2017.
Since the launch of the EU Internet Forum, concrete steps have been taken to stop the abuse of the internet by international terrorist groups, with measurable outcomes. Approximately 80-90% of content referred to the internet companies by Europol has been removed.
How does the Communication feed into the work of the EU Internet Forum?
The EU Internet Forum set out an ambitious Action Plan to combat terrorist content online in July of this year. This includes measures to step up the automated detection of illegal terrorist content online, share related technology and tools with smaller companies, achieve the full implementation and use of the 'database of hashes' and empower civil society on alternative narratives. The Communication encourages industry to enhance their efforts in all these areas; in this way the Communication and the Action Plan mutually reinforce one another.
The Commission has convened the second meeting of the Senior Officials of the EU Internet Forum to take stock of the implementation of the Action Plan. At the high level meeting of the Forum on 6 December 2017, the Commission will draw the first conclusions of the results achieved and assess how to move forward. Lessons and recommendations will feed into the progress measured under the current communication.
(Source: European Commission)
Parliamentarians at Westminster are forming a new cross-party group to raise issues around the illicit trade up the political agenda. The All Party Parliamentary Group which will be made up of Peers and MPs from across the political spectrum will look at some of the key issues and drivers behind illicit trade across a range of sectors. The APPG will explore supply and demand side and will look to bring fresh impetus and ideas to tackling such issues.
The Group will look to undertake a number of inquiries each year in order to deliver workable recommendations designed to assist Government, law enforcement, the private sector and ultimately consumers in tackling illicit trade.
Matthew Offord MP for Hendon who is setting up the Group said: “Illicit trade impacts on everyone no matter what business they are in and no matter if they are a multinational corporation, a small high street shop, a consumer or a taxpayer. I’ve been out in my own constituency and seen at first hand the impact that counterfeit audio visual and smuggled tobacco is having. It takes away custom from legitimate businesses whilst putting at greater risk those people who buy it. We also know that organised crime gangs are behind such seemingly low level and innocuous activities.
“The group will act as an important vehicle in Parliament to shine a light on some of the more intractable issues including whether the current approaches employed by Government and law enforcement are up to the job. Indeed, some of the losses to the public finances due to illicit trade are staggering – costing taxpayers’ hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
“I intend for the group to look at key issues in some detail and come up with new ideas on how they could be tackled including what works in other countries and the use of new technology.”
The Group will have expert advice from international consulting, technology and innovation company, PA Consulting Group.
Dr Steven Carden, anti-illicit trade expert at PA commented: “Human behaviours, evolving technologies and regulatory environments are all part of the challenges as well as the solutions for combatting illicit trade. PA Consulting Group is very pleased to be supporting this new All Party-Parliamentary Group and we look forward to providing expert independent advice based on learnings from other countries and activities we have previously undertaken in this field.”
The inaugural meeting of the Illicit Trade APPG will be on 5th September 2017 when officers of the Group will be nominated and chosen. A later meeting in the autumn will be scheduled to agree the work programme and will be open to all parties with an interest in tackling the illicit trade to attend and contribute.
(Source: PA Consulting Group)
The European Commission has recently given a fresh push to speed up the implementation of EU-wide rules for the use of drones in the European Union.
More than 1200 safety occurrences - including near-misses between drones and aircrafts - were reported in Europe in 2016, which underlines the pressing need for a modern and flexible EU regulatory framework. The Commission is therefore calling on the European Parliament and the Council to agree on its proposal from December 2015 establishing an EU-wide framework for drones. Pending this adoption, the Commission's Single European Sky Air traffic management Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR) – whose role is to develop the next generation of European Air Traffic Management – is today making half a million-euro available to support the demonstration of “geo-fencing” services. Geo-fencing can automatically prevent drones from flying into restricted zones, such as the vicinity of airports.
Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said: "Drones offer tremendous opportunities for new services and businesses. That is why we want Europe to be a global leader. I am confident our modern and flexible regulatory framework will give rise to new European champions in this sector. But safety always comes first. If we don't move fast enough, the near misses between drones and airplanes could one day have disastrous consequences. I am therefore calling on the European Parliament and the Council to swiftly agree on our proposal from December 2015."
Ensuring that drones can safely integrate the airspace alongside other users (such as aircraft) is fundamental. This is why the Commission proposed in November 2016 to create an automated traffic management system for drones operating at low-level, referred to as the “U-space”. Geo-fencing is a key component of the U-space.
The call for proposals announced today by SESAR aims to select one project demonstrating the active geo-fencing of drones flying below 500 feet (around 152 meters). It requires that drones users are provided with up-to-date information on no-fly zone as well as real-time alerts if they enter one. The project will build on the geolocation capabilities which are built-in in many drones today.
Today's funding comes on top of an envelope of 9 million euros that has already been earmarked for exploratory projects to speed up the development of the U-space, such as the automatic identification of drones or drone-to-drone communication.
Background information
In December 2015, the Commission proposed to create an EU-wide framework for drones as part of its Aviation Strategy. It tabled a legislative proposal establishing standards for drones and drone operations, which is still being examined by the European Parliament and the EU Member States.
In addition, it is necessary to ensure that drones can safely integrate into the airspace. Following the Commission's proposal to create the U-space, the Single European Sky Air traffic management Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR) produced a "blueprint" fleshing out the concept. Geo-fencing is one of the basic principles identified. It uses satellite positioning to create a virtual geographic boundary and automatically prevent drones from flying close to certain areas, such as airports.
Over the past years, an increasing number of 'near misses' – where a drone flies very close to a civilian aircraft – has been recorded across Europe. While it is very difficult to collect reliable data, evidence from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) suggests that there could have been more than 2100 safety "occurrences" involving drones between 2010 and 2016. Of these, 1200 were recorded in 2016 alone. More information is available here[1].
The funding which is announced today has been requested by the European Parliament as a specific preparatory action. It will last for 15 months. More information is available here.
(Source: European Commission)
Big Data, it seems, is everywhere. The capacity and speed delivered by new technology systems allows incomprehensibly large sets of data to be analysed by computers, revealing patterns, trends, and associations that can then be used to analyse and predict with greater certainty. This is very useful in the practice of law which is characterised by an enormous and ever-growing amount of data. Here Robin Chesterman, Head of Product at Justis, delves deep into the challenges the legal sphere currently faces with big data implementation.
For lawyers deploying the systems which support new cases, new legislation and new judgments, it has meant taking advantage of the digitisation of existing data and a vast amount of new data capture. But there is a catch. Although these gargantuan data sets are now more readily available, they have not yet become easier for lawyers to access, or to manage. In fact, innovation in how lawyers try to use all of that data to best advantage has been surprisingly slow. This Big Data problem is an increasing challenge for lawyers everywhere.
At present, Big Data tools for the legal profession are focused primarily on helping law firms to enhance their internal business functions and processes, such as time management and billing, or for predictive analytics in a range of internal legal applications. Document and contract management systems proliferate. They are expanding rapidly as a host of companies compete to develop platforms, many of them with AI capacity, that organise, summarise and analyse data so that it delivers genuine value in saving time when producing documents, and increasingly, as a flexible predictive tool.
By contrast, developing tools for the research and case preparation elements of their advisory work have seen notably much less innovation for lawyers. This leaves legal researchers often lacking easy access to the data that they need because they do not have the appropriate tools to undertake their research effectively.
Conventional legal data-driven research companies hold databases which contain enormous volumes of case information stretching back over centuries and across multiple jurisdictions. As the common starting point for legal researchers, they operate primarily as search engines with relatively few advanced analytical tools available for use. Meanwhile many legal researchers do not necessarily want to analyse historic legal data, but rather brand new incoming data.
These traditional platforms, which have become the standard default for many of those engaged in legal research, do not offer the right sort of technology to support the enormous volumes of data which they hold. Instead, platforms are needed to provide full comprehensive technological support which will allow researchers and practitioners to review the enormous quantity of case law that is being created and uploaded every year.
To address this shortcoming, JustisOne – the legal research platform operated by Justis – is now attempting to make the wealth of judgments (both reported and unreported) accessible and useful to practitioners. By making data analytics an automated part of the research process, JustisOne enables practitioners to focus more on the case itself rather than having to comb through judgments to find supporting case law. To achieve this, an assortment of sophisticated technologies are being deployed by Justis which are not currently used in combination by any other provider.
For researchers, the ‘Key Passages’ feature provides a simple, but effective way of viewing key aspects of any published judgment - highlighting the paragraphs that are most cited in other cases, and providing a link to the specific parts of those cases that discuss it. Beyond this cross-referencing of cases, the Justis team of legally qualified editors can also analyse the treatment given to each judgment, allowing practitioners to see at a glance the status of the law with reference to a multiplicity of judgments.
In further support, there is a unique data visualisation system that allows a single judgment to be viewed in the context of all other cases where it has been referenced. A practitioner is therefore able to instantly see which other cases have discussed the current case, as well as the relevance of those other cases by date and influence on each other.
Not every innovation needs to be complex. Even simple innovations can have an impact on the efficiency of legal research. Additional features such as side-by-side judgment analysis, indexed content from other platforms that links directly to the source, and a legal taxonomy which holds more than 1.5m search terms help to streamline the research process, simplify the work of practitioners, and save time.
As Big Data is applied across multiple aspects and categories of work done by law firms internally and on behalf of their clients, legal research has been slow to keep pace. But it is now catching up fast.
A direct action environmentalist group called Deep Green resistance is advocating for the Colorado river to be officially recognised as a person.
The organisation is asking, by motion of a lawsuit last week, for the US District Court for the District of Colorado to grant personhood status to the 1,450-mile-long water flow. If such status was awarded, the State of Colorado would therefore be considered as violating the river/person’s rights.
According to the Jurist, the complaint reads in part: “Through this action, the Plaintiffs are asking this Court to recognize and declare that the Colorado River is capable of possessing rights similar to a "person," and that as part of that declaration, that the Colorado River has certain rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve. In the absence of such a finding, Plaintiffs contend that existing environmental laws will continue to fail to protect the Colorado River, and thus, continue to fail to protect the human and natural communities that are dependent on the River.”
According to a press release from the Community Environmental Defense Fund (CELDF): “CELDF is serving as a legal adviser for the first-in-the-nation lawsuit in which a river is seeking recognition of its legal rights… Further, the lawsuit seeks a declaration from the federal court that the State of Colorado – the defendant in the case – may be held liable for violating the rights of the River.”
Mari Margil, Director of CELDF’s International Center for the Rights of Nature, explained: “This action is the first of its kind in the United States, and comes as courts around the world are beginning to hold that nature and ecosystems possess legally enforceable rights. Recently, courts in India and Colombia held that rivers, glaciers, and other ecosystems possess rights of their own. Building on ongoing lawmaking efforts, we believe that this lawsuit will be the first of many which begins to change the status of nature under our legal systems.”
Here Richard Grint, financial services expert at PA Consulting Group warns firms to start acting now to implement a framework that will monitor and mitigate risks of the new tax evasion fines to be implemented by HMRC this month.
Firms need to start acting now to implement a framework that will monitor and mitigate risks. The new legislation introduces an entirely new offence whereby corporations can be held responsible if any employee or agent acting on their behalf facilitates tax evasion in any way – and it has a global scope. This represents a steep change from the range of previous tax evasion offences and is a significant additional burden for firms.
Recent surveys by industry bodies suggested that less than 40% of financial services (FS) institutions have considered (let alone acted upon) the regulations – which could have significant fines attached. There is also no ‘grace’ period – HMRC will be enforcing this from the 1st October and are traditionally less open to dialogue than ‘true’ regulators.
Firms are obliged to have a framework in place to monitor and mitigate the risks – the government guidelines recommend that firms broadly use their Financial Crime frameworks as a starting point, and there are considerable synergies.
The risk is notably bigger for insurers and those FS firms that have a lot of intermediated business (IFAs, brokers etc.), as they are more likely to have agents operating on their behalf in a position to help facilitate tax evasion by customers. Managing the risk created by these intermediaries will be a substantial change from what has happened before.
Tax evasion has been a low priority for companies, but this needs to change and fast. The nature of this sort of change (i.e. boring, complex, no benefit at all to customer-facing businesses) means that:
This needs to change. If companies do not reorganise their priorities and enforce these regulations, then they will be facing significant fines.
This week, a leading Russian expert on countering terrorism, Joseph Linder said that following the attack on London Bridge, Britain should extradite thousands of people. With the upcoming general election, this is a sensitive matter to approach the public with.
According to The Sun, he said: “The political leadership of England must take radical measures. But ahead of the election, no-one will dare introduce tough total counter-terrorism measures that would mean extradition operations to send a huge number of people out.
“It is almost impossible to monitor migrants in the current situation, but the UK authorities do not want to take responsibility for extraditing thousands of people.”
Below Catherine Maclay, Senior Immigration Consultant at Gordon Dadds believes immigration policy should look beyond the common subjective perception of what immigration law comprises, with regards to terrorism and national security, but hone in on the economic factors behind immigration, the education benefits and fairness in human rights.
Brexit is causing some European Union nationals to seek certainty about their employment positions, careers, family life and futures in the United Kingdom. Similarly, British Citizens living within the European Union also want certainty about their respective positions. Not only are British citizens in the UK unsure as to what the future holds but they are looking for a better deal for themselves and also their foreign family members. Aside from British citizens and EU nationals, businesses are seeking clarity with Brexit, including speedy decision making on immigration related issues as well as on access to markets in and outside of Europe to be able to make important business decisions. The overarching message seems to be that society wants fairness and reason to prevail in the decisions of those in power.
UK immigration policy should address the areas below in the light of Brexit:
Brexit, whether you are for it or not, offers a chance to find fresh, creative, practical solutions for diverse society around the negotiating table.
