News

Jon Snow It had a lot to live up to, but the third in a series of Faculty of Advocates-hosted JUSTICE Scotland events - a discussion of the law and the media with Jon Snow and Helena Kennedy QC - more than rose to the challenge.

The executors of a deceased man who paid £150,000 to a woman in order to purchase and renovate property in which they lived together have failed in their claim to recover the money on the basis of “unjustified enrichment”. A judge in the Court of Session refused the claim for payment after ruli

Scottish Legal News has learned that former Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC has been appointed a temporary judge in advance of being installed as a Senator of the College of Justice. In response to the question of why Judge Mulholland was appointed before his formal installation, a spokesperson fo

Daryl Mcintosh Daryl Mcintosh advises property managers to be well-prepared ahead of the introduction of new rules next year.

Graham Reid It will be interesting to see whether the recent fine of £5 million on the operator of Alton Towers has any influence on the future approach to be taken by Scottish courts in health and safety sentencing, writes Graham Reid.

Nicola Sturgeon First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is facing criticism over a scrapped police IT project that has been called a “shambolic failure”.

This Scottish Parliament has agreed the Equal Opportunities Committee remit be expanded to include scrutiny of human rights. The committee will now be known as the Equalities and Human Rights Committee, and its work programme, due to be published at the end of October, will reflect the expanded remi

Churchill and Ireland

Ross Harper remembers Ross Harper, as author of this biography, certainly needs no introduction to Scottish lawyers given the number of legal roles, both in Scotland and at the International Bar Association, which he undertook during his lengthy career. That career included academia and the judiciar

A paedophile convicted of a catalogue of sexual offences against 19 children has failed in an appeal against his “lifelong” sentence. Andrew Byrne, 27, was given an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR) with a punishment part of six years in 2010 after pleading guilty at the High Court in Glasgow

Close to half (44 per cent) of urgent mental health detentions made in the past year were initiated by a doctor without the support and expertise of a mental health officer, it has been revealed. In a report published today, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland also finds that the number of ne

Lynda Brabender

The European Court of Human Rights has unanimously rejected the applications of two men found liable in trespass, following the Omagh bombing in 1998, who claimed they had not been given a fair hearing because the proceedings were essentially criminal in nature and because hearsay evidence of an und

Partners at a City law firm were under fire yesterday after it was claimed they had billed the taxpayer over £100 million to defend the Royal Bank of Scotland against shareholders in what is thought to be one of the biggest awards to a law firm ever made. It was reported yesterday that Herbert Smit