We frequently advise business owners on disputes that arise due to poorly drafted contracts, outdated documentation or business relationships in which the terms have never been documented in writing – leading to confusion between the parties as to what the actual terms are. These disputes can prove costly and time consuming for businesses of any size.
Once these disputes have arisen, business owners will often ‘kick themselves’ for not reviewing their contracts for years or letting relationships form without any formal written documentation but, as with many things in life, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Following the Grenfell tragedy and the recent student accommodation fire in Bolton, the pressure is on for Universities to ensure that their whole estate is “fully fire safe”.
This doesn’t just require an extensive review of University owned and managed premises, but also a review of accommodation, teaching space and research facilities owned or operated by private providers and partners.
North west commercial law firm Bermans has recently strengthened their employment law offering with a new expanded team, welcoming four new solicitors to the department throughout 2019 so far.
The firm, which has offices in Liverpool and Manchester, put plans in place to expand their employment team to cope with increasing work loads during the previous financial year.
If you are a business who has a turnover £10.2 million and have over 50 employees then the rule changes will affect you.
You will need to carry out determination status checks on your Contractors to assess whether they fall within or outside the IR35 rules. From a commercial point of view you may also need to change the way you take on Contractors so as to ensure it remains cost effective.
It is not unusual for parties and their legal advisers to agree, despite time limits set out in legislation, to disregard these time limits to give them an opportunity to try and agree their dispute without court proceedings. If they manage to do so they save significant sums on court fees and other associated costs of bringing the claim. If they don’t settle their dispute, they still have the option to pursue their claim, even if the time limits set out in the legislation has expired. Such agreements are referred to as ‘Standstill Agreements’.
In recent years, two popular topics of conversation have been the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the blockchain. The GDPR is legislation which provides new protection for individuals in relation to their personal data. The blockchain is a variant of distributed ledger technology, which some people believe will create new business models, cut costs, and provide new ways of verifying identity.
We shared this article in February 2017 and then this article in July 2017, which explained the current rules on recovery of costs by the winner of a court action from the loser. It had been proposed to introduce a “fixed recoverable costs” regime for business and other civil disputes, similar to the one for minor personal injury claims.
The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 left 72 people dead, many injured and hundreds homeless and shone a spotlight on the construction of high-rise apartments. It was quickly concluded that the Aluminium Composite Material (ACM), that was used to clad the building, was the reason why the fire spread so rapidly and extensively.
On Tuesday 3 September, Bermans sponsored the latest Blockchain Manchester Meetup, hosted by our friends at BlockRocket.
Our Head of Corporate, Jon Davage, was there to give the audience a brief introduction to the services Bermans offers to entrepreneurs in the tech sector. Also present was our Commercial and IP team, who has been a regular attendee at these blockchain meetups.
The Manchester insolvency team at Bermans advised Andy Hosking, Sean Bucknell and Michael Kiely of Quantuma LLP as Administrators of Bolton Whites Hotel Limited.
The Hotel was a subsidiary of Bolton Wanderers Football Club and operated a 125 bed, 4- star hotel, from premises in the South Stand of Bolton’s Stadium. It provided conference, banqueting and leisure facilities and match day hospitality for the football club from a number of function suites and hospitality areas around the stadium.
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