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.
Claire McDonnell (pictured below), qualified as a Solicitor in 2010 and joined Bermans in January 2019 as a Senior Associate in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution team.
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?
On Friday 15 January 2021 the Supreme Court delivered its eagerly awaited judgment in the test case between the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and various insurers. The FCA was acting on behalf of policyholder businesses disrupted by COVID-19.
To the relief of SMEs awaiting the decision, the court found heavily in favour of the policyholders.
It is estimated that 370,000 policyholders could be directly affected.