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27 July 2012 / Dominic Regan
Issue: 7524 / Categories: Blogs
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Going batty

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Dominic Regan is bemused by the lengths dishonest employees will go to

The employment law reports have recently produced a series of judgments suggesting that senior male employees think they are undercover agents. It is intriguing that employees are at their most creative when considering how they might be disloyal to their employer and so clear off to make a shed-load of money for themselves elsewhere.

Memory block

Let us start with the world’s worst outbreak of amnesia, Tullett Prebon plc v BGC Brokers LP [2010] EWHC 484 (QB). This was yet another enormous spat between city slickers, with the claimant company establishing that the defendants had unlawfully sought to induce a whole team to decamp and join BGC. Inevitably, there would have been a frenzy of messages flying around between the conspirators. There is a profound difference between e-mails, which can often be resurrected despite deletion (but see below), and text messages which cannot be accessed save by reading them on the device concerned. Mr Verrier, a key defendant, managed to lose eight

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Sidley—James Inness

Sidley—James Inness

Partner joins capital markets team in London office

Haynes Boone—William Cecil

Haynes Boone—William Cecil

Firm announces appointment of partner as UK general counsel

Devonshires—Nicholas Barrows

Devonshires—Nicholas Barrows

Firm appoints first chief marketing officer to drive growth strategy

NEWS

The Court of Appeal has slammed the brakes on claimants trying to swap defendants after limitation has expired. In Adcamp LLP v Office Properties and BDB Pitmans v Lee [2026] EWCA Civ 50, it overturned High Court rulings that had allowed substitutions under s 35(6)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980, reports Sarah Crowther of DAC Beachcroft in this week's NLJ

A seemingly dry procedural update may prove potent. In his latest 'Civil way' column for NLJ this week, Stephen Gold explains that new CPR 31.12A—part of the 193rd update—fills a ‘lacuna’ exposed in McLaren Indy v Alpa Racing
The long-running Mazur saga edged towards its finale as the Court of Appeal heard arguments on whether non-solicitors can ‘conduct litigation’. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Dominic Regan of City Law School reports from a packed courtroom where 16 wigs watched Nick Bacon KC argue that Mr Justice Sheldon had failed to distinguish between ‘tasks and responsibilities’
Cheating in driving tests is surging—and courts are responding firmly. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Parpworth of De Montfort Law School charts a rise in impersonation and tech-assisted fraud, with 2,844 attempts recorded in a year
As AI-generated ‘deepfake’ images proliferate, the law may already have the tools to respond. In NLJ this week, Jon Belcher of Excello Law argues that such images amount to personal data processing under UK GDPR
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