The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a request to find that a group known as the ‘hooded men’ who were detained during internment in Northern Ireland in 1971 suffered ‘torture’. In 1978, the Court ruled that the UK had carried out inhuman and degrading treatment but fell short of defining this as torture. The Irish government had asked the Court to revise its original judgment. The 14 hooded men said they were beaten, forced to stand in the stress position and deprived of sleep, food and water. One man was blindfolded and thrown from a helicopter, which he was told was hundreds of feet in the air.
22 March 2018
Hooded men rejected by ECtHR
MOVERS & SHAKERS
Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton
Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner
Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan
Group names Shakespeare Martineau partner head of Sheffield office
Blake Morgan—four promotions
Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices
NEWS
The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC
Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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