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NLJ this week: ‘Without prejudice’, assumption of responsibility & capacity

30 May 2025
Issue: 8118 / Categories: Legal News , Personal injury , Mental health , Expert Witness , Liability
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What protection is afforded to ‘without prejudice’ communications? This, and other conundrums are among the issues raised in recent personal injury caselaw. In this week’s NLJ, Vijay Ganapathy and Claire Spearpoint, both partners, Leigh Day, round up the latest important cases for practitioners

First up, assumption of responsibility is a much-debated area of tort. The authors discuss the difficult case of Dobson, where the court had to decide whether a police authority was liable for life-changing injuries sustained by a man who attempted suicide after release from custody. The man was brought in as he had threatened to kill himself, and the police arranged for a mental health assessment.

Ganapathy and Spearpoint cover assessment of capacity where the expert evidence was considered inadequate. Finally, they look at a case on the protective status of a ‘without prejudice’ letter in a motorcycle crash case where there were allegations of fundamental dishonesty—'a reminder that the without prejudice protection, while broad, is not absolute’. 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Mourant—Stephen Alexander

Mourant—Stephen Alexander

Jersey litigation lead appointed to global STEP Council

mfg Solicitors—nine trainees

mfg Solicitors—nine trainees

Firm invests in future talent with new training cohort

360 Law Group—Anthony Gahan

360 Law Group—Anthony Gahan

Investment banking veteran appointed as chairman to drive global growth

NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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