Boxing, in particular professional boxing, has been bedevilied in recent years by a number of highly publicised tragedies in the ring. Despite these tragedies, the Law Commission in its recent Consultation Paper declined the opportunity to review the legality of professional boxing. The Law Commission concluded that

‘boxing, if it is to remain lawful, can only do so by the application of public policy considerations that are particular to that sport. Since that is a matter of pure policy, divorced from the more general considerations addressed in this Paper, we do not think it would be useful for us to add to the already formidable public debate on the issues.

There is nothing new about legal rules which provide that a person who is in control of land owes a duty of care to entrants thereto. These occupiers’ liability rules are often seen as something primarily to do with tort, but their content and substance are also likely to reveal a good deal about the ‘property policy’ of the legal system in question, in the sense that they will indicate the respective weight and importance attachkd to various kinds of competing claim over land. A legal system containing rules that restrict the circumstances in which those with individual, controlling claims over land owe a duty of care to other persons entering that land would appear to indicate a policy preference for supporting and protecting ‘private property’ claims to land above others. On the other hand, a system which imposes on those controlling land a greater degree of legal responsibility for persons entering thereon may be one based on a policy of recognising, protecting and supporting a range of claims in land beyond those of a narrow, private nature.

One of the more vexed questions for tort lawyers in recent times has been whether recovery in negligence lies for the what has been described as the ‘loss of a chance’. The exact definition of ‘loss of chance’ is unclear, but it is generally accepted that it refers to the loss of an opportunity to obtain or receive a desired outcome; for example, recovery from a personal injury. Accordingly, where a patient receives negligent medical treatment in circumstances where, even if the treatment was properly carried out, that patient might not have been cured it is said that the patient has lost the chance of being cured as a result of the treatment.

It is a general principle that interests in property are transferred consensually. Of course, the law may provide that in certain circumstances property may be expropriated by the state or that a person's property should be transferred to another independently of the owner's will; for example, when a person becomes bankrupt his assets vest automatically in the trustee in bankruptcy. Nevertheless, dealings between individuals with regard to property are premised on the notion that property entitlements are transferred by consensual arrangements. A sale, for example, requires the agreement of the buyer and the seller. The position with regard to gifts is slightly more difficult because English law does not require any actual acceptance by the donee. However, as Lawson and Rudden point out, ‘since [the donee] is at liberty to refuse the gift, from his failure to do so it may be presumed that he is willing to acquire the property in question.’

The traditional common law analysis where a third party wishes to acquire an indefeasible interest in a chattel is to direct the latter to the ‘owner’, as the prerequisite for the enjoyment of most property rights depends upon our ability to acquire these from someone else. In this respect, the issue of whether a disposition constitutes the extinguishment of an interest in the chattel or whether a dealing raises priority questions is fundamental. Extinguishment issues go to rights of ownership, typically, where the property of A is misappropriated by a third party T who disposes of it to B, and the question of law is whether B prevails against A with its attendant consequence of extinguishing A's title. In contrast, a priority dispute arises where there are competing security interests in the same chattel which may be resolved either through a subordination agreement or through clear priority rules.

The Privy Council decision in Prebble v Television New Zealand Ltd on parliamentary privilege in the New Zealand House of Representatives might at first sight seem to be of little concern to either the British courts or the Westminster parliament. However, the New Zealand parliament bases its freedom of speech on article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688. Indeed the need to allow MPs to speak freely in proceedings in parliament without fear of legal action is accepted as a basic principle throughout the Commonwealth. It is perhaps surprising that there is relatively little English case law on the meaning of this article. This may be because as Lord Browne-Wilkinson observed in Prebble, article 9 is one manifestation of a wider principle, namely: ‘that the courts and Parliament are both astute to recognise their respective constitutional roles.

The House of Lords has now handed down decisions in six cases which have involved extended discussions of the scope of liability to compensate another for pure economic loss under the Hedley Byme principle. It seems reasonable to suppose that we can now arrive, on the basis of those decisions, at some conclusions as to when and why such liability arises. In this article we attempt to amve at such conclusions. In so doing we avoid using the usual terminology- ‘duty of care’, ‘proximity’, ‘just and reasonable’, ‘policy’, ‘reliance’, ‘assumption of responsibility’, ‘equivalent to contract’, even ‘negligence’-which an analysis of the scope and rationale of liability under Hedley Byme would be expected to employ.

When the topic of severance of a beneficial joint tenancy is discussed, most judges and academics start with the case of Williams v Hensman. The judgment of Sir William Page Wood V-C is the ‘locus classicus’, the ‘starting point for any discussion of the modem law’. One paragraph of Page Wood's judgment is quoted in case after case:

‘A joint tenancy may be severed in three ways: in the first place, an act of one of the persons interested operating on his own share may create a severance as to that share. The right of each joint tenant is a right by survivorship only in the event of no severance having taken place of the share which is claimed under the jus accrescendi. Each one is at liberty to dispose of his own interest in such a manner as to sever it from the joint fund - losing, of course, at the same time, his own right of survivorship.

In the twin cases of Barclays Bank Plc v O’Brien and CIBC Mortgages Plc v Pitt the House of Lords consided for the first time an issue which has fresuently troubled the lower courts in recent years. In essence the issue can be boiled down to the following question:

Where a debt owed by A to C is guaranteed by B, in what circumstances will the fact that A induced B to make the guarantee by misrepresentation, undue influence or other conduct of which Equity disapproves, render the guarantee voidable by B against C?

(This simplified scenario, where A is the principal debtor, C the creditor, and B the guarantor, will be used in much of what follows). The contemporary significance of the question, and the difficulty which it has posed to the courts, are graphically shown by the fact that it has given rise to eleven reported decisions by the Court of Appeal in the last eight years.

Private nuisance is, on the face of it, an old-fashioned tort, whose agrarian, antidevelopmental roots may make its contemporary relevance seem limited. On the other hand, both nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher hold obvious attractions for litigants whose interests have suffered as a result of environmental change. The potential apotheosis of nuisance into a ‘Toxic Tort’ presents tort lawyers and environmental lawyers with a number of pressing questions concerning the nature and scope of private law in this context.

This article will seek to assess in outline the positive potential of tort law in this respect, but it will also be argued that there may nevertheless be real conflicts between the law of tort and central elements of environmental law. The nature of those potential conflicts can only be understood if we clarify the form (or forms) of liability effected by relevant torts, and here the tort of nuisance poses particular problems. Once clarified, however, I would suggest that these conflicts can contribute to debates, not just about tort law, but also about the basic aspirations of environmental law and policy.

The nature of employment is changing and this brings with it the need to reconsider the rules of vicarious liability as to those for whom an employer should be liable. In recent years government policy indicating the preferred nature of the employment market has brought about considerable changes in employment practices and these have been reflected in employment law. Not only has there been a drift towards self employment but also a rise in such categories as casual workers, agency workers and trainees, and at the same time there has been a rise in legalism in employment law which has produced a number of technicalities specific to that subject. Undue concentration on the contract of employment and the rise of the concept of mutuality of obligation mean that we now have a view of the nature of ‘employment’ which is skewed towards the demands of employment law and the policies embedded therein.

If there is one fact about which critics (deregulators) and proponents (regulators) of anti-insider dealing laws are certain to agree, it is that rules designed to prohibit trading on inside information are popular. Virtually every country with a developed securities market has implemented legislation regulating insider dealing and in the vast majority of cases criminal sanctions have been imposed. Britain is no exception, and has recently reaffirmed its policy commitment in the Criminal Justice Act 1993, Part V (CJA). Regulators claim that legislation is justified on the basis of a range of different arguments, the most consistently cited of which is that insider dealing jeopardises the development of fair and orderly markets and by so doing undermines investor confidence. Other justifications include allegations that insider dealing is immoral, and contrary to ‘good business ethic’; that it hurts corporations (and their shareholders), investors, and market-makers;

On 18 December 1993 The Independent reported that two brothers had been convicted of manslaughter in Saratov, in the Volga region, in the first jury trial to be held in Russia since the Revolution. Japan is poised, should it so wish, to reinstate jury trial, an institution it abandoned with little regret in 1942; Argentina is considering the introduction of juries; it is possible that in conformity with article 125 of its constitution, Spain, too, may yet bring forward proposals for a form of trial by jury. Such developments prompt the thought that, although a growing number of non-common law jurisdictions around the world are espousing jury trial (or, at least, giving serious thought to the possibility), and although several European civilian jurisdictions already operate forms of trial by jury, there is a lack of reliable information about the place the jury occupies in the public's and the legal profession's mind in non-common law jurisdictions.

Are company executives greedy? Recent reports reveal that executives’ pay no longer corresponds with corporate performance. The earnings gap has also continued to widen since the 1980s and senior executives in public companies are regularly criticised for taking too much from the corporate purse. The press has highlighted large salary figures and, during a period of economic recession, headlines which accuse corporate bosses of riding a gravy train have considerable impact. This is an issue for corporate governance. We are forced to ask why company law has seemingly failed to control levels of pay at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

The law of negligence has long been concerned not to countenance liability ‘in an indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class’. Nowhere, except perhaps in relation to pure economic loss, has this reluctance been more pronounced than in the context of negligently inflicted psychiatric harm. Without aiming to advocate a system of law that would create an increase in the workload of personal injury practitioners, this article attempts a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the bases of liability for psychiatric harm. More particularly, its primary aim is to accommodate liability for such harm within the current, tripartite framework governing the duty of care: that harm to the plaintiff be foreseeable, that there be a relationship of proximity between the plaintiff and the defendant and, that it be just and reasonable to impose a duty. Such an endeavour is both timely and necessary in view of the House of Lords’ recent insistence that in all cases-even those involving physical harm-all three limbs of the duty formula must explicitly be demonstrated.