Leansale Limited, trading as Roopyal Laham Halaal Butchers, has been fined £10,000 for breaching the law around the treatment of animals, on 18 November 2021, 13 January 2022 and 23 January 2022. The offences included the overcrowding of animals in holding pens, failure to provide drinking water to animals, keeping some areas unsafe for animals, failure to respond appropriately to the unloading of a lame animal, and grabbing and dragging a sheep by its fleece and horns. The offences were discovered when officers from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) investigated the company on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and examined CCTV footage of the premises which identified several offences around the handling of cattle and sheep. The FSA gathered the evidence and passed it to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who authorised a number of charges against the company under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015, SI 2015/1782. At Birmingham magistrates' court on 22 May 2023, the company was ordered to pay a fine of £10,000 as well as costs of £500 and a surcharge of £190.

An extra parochial ministry licence (allowing a priest to perform services as a minister outside of his parish or in an institution) is a relevant qualification for the purposes of discrimination by a qualifications body under the Equality Act 2010 and so the Church of England bishop granting such a licence is a qualifications body for these purposes. The refusal to grant such a licence because the priest has entered into a same sex marriage amounts to direct discrimination because of sexual orientation but an exception applies where the purpose of the employment is for an organised religion and the action taken by the body was to comply with the doctrines of that religion. EAT: Pemberton v Inwood.

Electronic data can be measured in bits, which is basically the space it takes up.

Law360: Lawyers for the man who failed to prove he invented bitcoin told a London court on 14 June 2024 that he has dropped a case brought by his company against software developers as it also turned on his claim to be the pseudonymous inventor of the virtual currency.

IP analysis: Craig Wright claims to have founded Bitcoin, the well-known cryptocurrency. He is involved in several sets of legal proceedings. In the present claim, he was seeking permission to serve a claim outside of the jurisdiction, and so had to demonstrate that there was a serious issue to be tried. In this judgment, the High Court ruled that no copyright subsists in the Bitcoin file format. The judgment provides an in-depth analysis of whether copyright is capable of subsisting in the format of data files used in a computer program. For a literary, dramatic or musical work to be protected by copyright it must be recorded or fixed. To get copyright protection in a file format, files in that format must have content indicating the structure, rather than just reflecting it. Written by Connor Griffith, associate, and Giles Parsons, partner at Browne Jacobson LLP.

A wholesale product which consists of an access link to the customer premises (over copper, coax or fibre) and a transmission service (eg Ethernet) to a defined set of handover points (the access point). It enables alternative communications providers to differentiate their services by altering a number of technical parameters and/or the use of their own network.

Fischer Black and Myron Scholes invented formulae which showed how investments, especially in a hedge fund and especially options, should be priced. They won the Nobel Prize for their work, but it fell into disfavour after they were involved in the largest investment failure ever at the time (Long Term Capital Management lost $4.6bn in four months, thought to be a virtual impossibility)

Leveraged finance facilities agreements will often impose conditions on lenders transferring their commitments. In the US in particular, this may include a restriction on transfer to any financial institution contained in a separate 'blacklist'. Institutions named on the blacklist will typically be comprised of institutions that the sponsor thinks will not be supportive in the event the business gets into financial difficulties.

The offence A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for themselves or another or with intent to cause loss to another, they make any unwarranted demand with menaces. A demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief that: • they have reasonable grounds for making the demand, and • the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand Blackmail is an indictable-only offence that can only be tried in the Crown Court. Jurisdiction One of the constituent elements of the offence must occur in England and Wales. A person will be guilty of the offence of blackmail whether or not they were in England and Wales at any material time and whether or not they are a British citizen. Jurisdiction is established if the communication of a demand were sent either: • from a place in England and Wales to a place elsewhere, or • from a place elsewhere to a place in England and Wales In R v Pogmore,

Blackmail is any unwarranted demand with menaces.

Law360, London: Protection against unfair dismissal should kick in after six months rather than on employees' first day on the job, a think tank headed by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said 6 November 2025, adding to a groundswell of opposition to the headline policy of the Labour government's Employment Rights Bill.

Private Client analysis: The court blessed (approved) the decisions of a professional trustee (the Trustee) of two Jersey law governed discretionary trusts (the Trusts) to vary the instruments of the Trusts so as to allow the female line of the family to be added as beneficiaries and then to exercise their powers of addition to add the primary beneficiary’s wife and female issue as beneficiaries of the Trusts. The Trustees’ decisions were contrary to the views and wishes of the settlor of the Trusts who intended the Trusts to benefit his male line only. This decision will be of interest to trust practitioners because there is little authority or guidance from the courts addressing provisions in trust deeds which are discriminatory in nature. This decision is a helpful illustration of how the courts will approach such matters, particularly in cases of dynastic trusts where the settlor’s wishes were expressed in a different time. Written by Danny Le Maistre, partner at Ingram Advocates, Jersey.