When businesses enter into contracts with one another, it is common for them to want their own terms and conditions (Ts&Cs) to apply to the contract. However, whether these have been successfully implemented into the contract often does not seem to be of concern to the parties until a dispute presents itself. Having the Ts&Cs adequately incorporated is especially important since it is common practice for businesses to conduct their dealings through contractual documents such as purchase orders and invoices rather than having an actual written contract in place. By not having a signed contract in place, the parties open up themselves to scrutiny over which party’s Ts&Cs are to prevail in case of a dispute.
You have – all things considered – enjoyed a fruitful trading relationship with a supplier or customer over many years, or at least you have assumed that to be the case.
Then things go sour. You locate your copy of the contract, only to find that it was made by your predecessor company, or the other party’s predecessor, or even both. The change(s) may have been due to a corporate reorganisation. In any case there is no evidence in writing of consent to the change, as required under the contract.
Late March saw the end of some long-standing temporary changes in the law due to COVID-19, and the introduction of some new ones! Commercial landlords and tenants are affected.
From early in the first lockdown in 2020, commercial landlords were banned from exercising most of the usual remedies available to them to enforce rent arrears that fell due during the period of the pandemic, as a measure to protect tenant businesses.
Intellectual property rights are valuable assets of your business and it is important that you take steps to protect them. You can do this by registering your rights and ensuring that anyone infringing those rights is stopped as soon as possible.
Recent independent studies undertaken by the Legal Services Board and Xero convey a worrying and consistent theme that SME debt is a ticking time bomb.
UK SMEs are losing more than £40 Billion per year through disputes and have £131 Billion tied up in late payments. YouGov has reported that 82% of SMEs currently have outstanding balances with each firm owed an average £62,957.00.
This is the latest article (and first since 2019) in our series, following the slow but inevitable progress towards a “fixed costs” regime for most civil court disputes involving businesses.
Manchester Building Society (MBS) successfully appealed to the Supreme Court in a claim for negligence against its ex-auditors Grant Thornton (GT), after losing in the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
The facts of the case are quite unusual. However the judgment is of wider importance since the court took a different approach to assessing loss arising from an adviser’s breach of duty, from the previous line of cases going back to the 1990s, and the decision should signal a change of direction.
January’s Supreme Court judgment in the FCA’s test case against insurers for COVID-19 business interruption insurance claims was a great relief to many SMEs, as we wrote at the time (see below)
Reports at the time of the judgment said that 370,000 businesses could be impacted by the test case – not all favourably although the judgment was undoubtedly good news for businesses overall.
When Diego Maradona passed away in November 2020, speculation was rife in the press as to whether he had a valid Will and, if he did, whether it provided for all of his children with some newspapers reporting he had fathered eight children whereas others had the figure as high as 11!
While the Maradona situation is thankfully not commonplace, sorting out the estate of a loved one when they die can be a daunting task. If they had a Will in place that should make things easier but what if the Will doesn’t make adequate provision for all of the dependants or if you are concerned that the Will has not been interpreted correctly?
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This is the latest article (and first since 2019) in our series, following the slow but inevitable progress towards a “fixed costs” regime for most civil court disputes involving businesses.
