Mitchell Skilling

The High Court of Justiciary has quashed a woman’s three convictions in respect of abusive communications and breach of bail offences to which she pled guilty at trial after ruling that she had a severe delusional disorder that prevented her from tendering an effective plea and from being fit

A Glasgow sheriff has dismissed an action by a divorced husband against his solicitors seeking damages in excess of £137,000 after finding that he had failed to plead a relevant case to establish either negligence or breach of contract after they did not inform him he would be liable for Capit

The Sheriff Appeal Court has refused an appeal by a landowner who was awarded £772 to repair damage caused to his land by his neighbour’s cattle after finding that the sheriff was correct not to allow him to lodge additional claim forms for more damages that had not been correctly intima

A lord ordinary has granted interim possession and interdict in respect of a property forming the sequestrated estate of an elderly man in Edinburgh after finding that it was possible that there was still a risk of unlawful occupation of the property if an order was not made. The Accountant in Bankr

A woman who was refused information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 concerning the number of police officers who had been arrested since 2013 had lost an appeal to the Inner House of the Court of Session against the Scottish Information Commissioner’s decision that the ref

The Upper Tribunal for Scotland has refused a tenant’s application for permission to appeal a decision of the Housing and Property Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal in which it determined that an unfair rent review clause was made fair by the inclusion of a right of independent assessment. Ro

A lord ordinary has excluded from proof a series of averments in a dispute between a telecoms company and a couple living in a former railway cottage over the proposed installation of a mast approximately half a kilometre from their property in Caithness concerning the ownership of a private level c

The Inner House of the Court of Session has refused an appeal by the mother of a child of dual Nigerian-Italian nationality against the grant of an adoption order sought by another Nigerian national living in England in respect of her now nine-year-old son, having found that there was no merit in an

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has allowed an appeal by a London firm of solicitors against a finding that it had unlawfully deducted just over £7,800 in wages from a newly qualified solicitor by failing to make a commission payment due under his contract of employment, after finding that it w

The Court of Appeal of England and Wales has allowed an appeal against a decision that a company that contracted for the purchase of millions of face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic was due to pay $16 million to the seller after finding that the High Court judge had decided the case on grounds no

A sheriff has granted an application by a single woman in her late forties to adopt a four-year-old child and dispensed with the consent of her parents after determining that they would be unable to satisfactorily discharge their responsibilities for the foreseeable future and the orders they propos

The High Court of Justiciary has quashed a sheriff’s findings that a man who refused to attend a Housing Department meeting to be set up with approved housing during a period of supervised release had breached the conditions of his supervised release order, after finding that the procedure fol

The Sheriff Appeal Court has quashed the conviction of a woman fined £100 for shouting and swearing and making a homophobic remark to a female complainer after finding that the justice of the peace had not adequately explained in her verdict why she preferred the evidence of the complainer. El

A lord ordinary has ruled that a claim by an Indian national seeking asylum in the UK on the basis of his homosexuality could not be regarded as clearly unfounded for the purposes of section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 after finding that it was not impossible that a tribun

A sheriff has awarded £3,216 in damages to a lorry driver who was injured when a learner motorcyclist collided with the back of his lorry and he fell from the steps outside the cab after he rejected an argument that the force involved in the crash was too small to cause any injury. Pursuer Joh