The Building Safety Bill was finally introduced into Parliament on 30 June 2021 with the aim of delivering fundamental reform to the building safety system. The Bill’s progress through Parliament will be closely monitored as the construction industry looks to prepare for the potentially wide-ranging impact of this complex piece of legislation. The Bill was published in draft form in 2020 to enable pre-legislative scrutiny ...
COVID-19 came upon us all like a tsunami, leveling life as we knew it and causing an entirely new paradigm of behavior to be necessary. No segment of the population was hit harder than seniors, both in our communities and in senior care facilities. Long-term care facilities were on the frontlines of the battle, being one of the first industries to be required to wholly alter traditional behaviors to try to stop the inevitable spread of this deadly virus ...
Chapter 53 of the Texas Property Code just received major updates for the first time in years. On June 15, 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law HB 2237. This bill makes many notable changes to Texas’s lien laws. The construction industry and construction lawyers should take note of these changes to the complex and often confusing world of mechanic’s, contractor’s, and materialman’s liens in Texas ...
Key Points Eviction protections that were set to expire June 30, 2021, have been extended to September 30, 2021. New notice requirements took effect on July 1, 2021; additional notice requirements take effect on October 1, 2021. Governmental rental assistance is now available to pay 100 percent of a qualified tenant's rent. On June 28, 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 832 into law, effective immediately ...
A lot has been written about the Scottish case where William Grant sued the budget supermarket chain Lidl for trade mark infringement. The issue Lidl is selling a gin that one imagines was intended to look rather a lot like the well-established Hendricks gin. This Lidl gin is called Hampstead, although the similarity between the two products relates as much to get-up as to the (surely not coincidental) choice by Lidl of a nine-letter name that starts with the letter H ...
Dinsmore's Chris Cashen, Anne Guillory, Chris Jackson, and Kyle Bunnell were published in dri Strictly Speaking, Vol. 18 Issue 1. Their article, "States’ COVID-19 Immunity Statutes and Product Liability Claims Related to COVID-19," examines states’ COVID-19 immunity statutes for product designers, manufacturers, and distributors concerning COVID-19-related lawsuits. An excerpt is below ...
From caterpillar cakes and “anti-establishment” IPA beer to gin, the issue of “copycat” own brands has been thrown into the spotlight by a series of recent court actions involving some of the country’s best-known food and drink producers and discount supermarket chains ...
The Consumer Protection Act 1987 (the CPA) was enacted almost 35 years ago in order to implement EU law. The act introduced the concept of “strict liability” into the arena of product supply to certain users. This means that consumers who are injured by defective products can sue manufacturers without having to prove negligence. This practical guide provides an overview of the CPA for consumers and manufacturers, with reference to recent key cases ...
A party making a claim bears the burden of proof, meaning that it is responsible for proving its claim. In civil disputes (as opposed to criminal matters) a claim generally must be proven ‘on the balance of probabilities’ if it is to be successful. How is this achieved? The answer is that the claimant must present sufficient evidence to persuade the decision maker that its case is more probable than not ...
As we emerge from lockdown, the pace of change in the real estate world is increasing once again. Michael Callaghan looks at what the legal landscape looks like in the coming months. Climate change The Government is planning significant changes to the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) and the provisions that apply to Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to drive down carbon emissions from buildings ...
Following the latest government announcements, where do landlords and tenants stand in relation to the recovery of rent unpaid during the Coronavirus pandemic? The simple answer is there is a significant degree of uncertainty, and an awful lot of detail around the government’s proposals and that has yet to be resolved ...
Wednesday June 30 2021 is when the Stamp Duty ‘holiday’ in its current form at least will end. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, introduced the temporary Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in July 2020 to boost the housing market following the first national lockdown. The aim was to save buyers from paying stamp duty on any properties valued at up to £500,000 – a saving worth up to £15,000 ...
The Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 2021 is being expedited through the legislative process. It will provide for extensions to a number of time limits, including for the passing of development plans. Importantly however it will also allow for extensions, or additional extensions, to existing planning permissions to allow projects be completed. Planning permissions have a fixed duration, usually five years ...
Agricultural rent reviews have been a source of controversy within the industry for many years. After a period of 15 years or so where there was little rent review activity in the agricultural tenanted sector between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s, a sharp spike in commodity prices during the course of 2007 led to a large number of rent review notices being served ...
There are a plethora of issues that parties need to work through to make a strategic land project viable; not least, the UK tax system which has a number of potential pitfalls that can materially impact returns. At present, there is no single tax efficient model catered for in UK legislation to enable parties to come together ...
Given the new trends and styles that emanate regularly from its players, the fashion industry is one that is constantly evolving. This industry, which is largely characterised by the production, display and sale of clothing, shoes, and perfume products has contributed immensely to the global gross domestic product ...
Many people have used their time at home to consider their health and well-being. Some have taken up exercise, yoga or getting a dog. Others have decided to find out more about their health in order to make healthier choices and use online portals like 23andMe (saliva test), Thriva (blood test) or Pharmacy2u (blood or urine test) to point them in the right direction ...
The COVID pandemic has catalysed the decline of traditional retail as the dominant offer in our town centres. There is a growing consensus that a significant part of most town centres needs to have a greater focus on the local community, be experimental and better address local needs. Alongside this, we have the government agenda to ‘level up’ and to ‘build back better’ ...
On 22 May 2021, SPV77 Co. Ltd., a special purpose entity set up to issue and offer Siri Hub Investment Digital Tokens (“SIRIHUB”) to investors secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) for the country’s first Initial Coin Offering (“ICO”). The first ICO approval by the SEC follows three years of legal changes starting with the passage of the Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Business Operation B.E. 2561 (2018) ...
As we emerge from the pandemic, UK cities have a positive future – from the growth of digital broadcasting in Manchester to the positive future for inward investment; from what is needed to preserve our high streets to excitement around the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. The UK Cities Investor Guide is a bi-annual publication produced in partnership with EG, and tackles some of the key challenges and opportunities facing the real estate investment market ...
Commercial landlords have, in the past year and a half, dealt with many novel issues in relation to COVID-19, often on an emergency basis. Few landlords have had to deal with both public health order violations and gang crime relating to the same tenant, as in a recent decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, Ivy Lounge West Georgia Limited Partnership v. TA F&B Limited Partnership, 2021 BCSC 997 ...
The final phase of the Esterra Park development in Redmond, Washington, is a carbon-neutral development. Schwabe client JTM Construction is the general contractor for that project. As attorneys, we are interested in staying up to date on market trends, so we asked JTM to put together a panel to brief Schwabe’s Real Estate and Construction industry group on the carbon-neutral aspects of the project ...
An adjudicator’s jurisdiction is central to their ability to determine a dispute between two parties; without it, their decision will be invalid and unenforceable by a court. Conversely, if an adjudicator has jurisdiction, then, as the Court of Appeal has repeatedly emphasised, that adjudicator’s decision must be enforced, even if it results from errors of procedure, fact or law ...
It is a well-established rule of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (the ‘Act’) that an adjudicator will only have jurisdiction to determine one dispute under a construction contract at any one time, unless their jurisdiction has been extended by consent of the parties ...
