Clanger J's Legal Open House

[major_clanger]

As me a question about law.

I'm not guaranteeing I'll answer it, but I'll have a go. At the very least, if it's a difficult or obscure issue, I'll try to explain why it's difficult or explore.

I've not studied much criminal law yet, so I may be rather vague on that.

[As an aside, this is not me trying to show off, honest. It's more that I'm now half-way through my OU law degree, and have picked up a fair bit about a subject that many people find interesting but often haven't had the chance to learn much about. Needless to say, nothing you hear from me is proper legal advice - the only bit of that I can offer is "you ought to talk to a proper lawyer".]

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

All right then. Why is Habeas Corpus one of the key rights of a individual, as I understand it to be a writ that judges issue to bring people to a court.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Because it allows you (or your supporters) to get your lawyers to ask that you be brought to court, so that a judge can give proper legal consideration as to whether you should be being held. Habeus Corpus has traditionally been the mechanism by which the courts guarded against arbitrary detention by the executive branch of government; the court could literally say 'bring him bodily before us' so at the very least making it harder for a prisoner to be locked away and forgotten about, or worse.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I think you were away when I considered doing just this last week or maybe the week before.

A company makes an individual (or rather, their role) redundant.
The company subsequently employs people to do incredibly similar work - such that the "redundancy" of the role is questionable.

What is the legal timeframe in which this can happen? Somebody told me it was 6 months. So far as I can now tell, this is incorrect.

In fact, so far as I can tell there's a great big legal loophole sitting there, but I'm interested to see what you have to say in general to this.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

As an aside to this, is there a clear definition of 'similar work'?

Would 'extragalactic astronomy' classify as similar enough for this to count, or would 'extragalactic astronomy at a particular wavelength range using a specific instrument' be required.

This is the kind of question that could very easily come up in various universities in the nearish future, so is a very real issue.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Employment Law is one of those big and complex areas I alluded to! (It's taught as a separate optional course in the OU's Law degree). But looking at some of the online references, it seems that there is no hard-and-fast period. The phrase that tends to be used is 'immediately' but is immediate replacement that week, that month, or three months later? I suspect that it is left for the Employment Tribunal to apply its own discretion.

Similarity of work seems to be an equally complex issue. One key question appears to be whether your work was particularly specialist, and the subsequent employee did not have those specialist skills. So if an employer does work via software package X, and its business for product produced with X falls off, then if it employs a person especially skilled in using X, then they might reasonably make him or her redundant and employ someone with different or more generic skills instead. However, the redundant employee could have a case that he or she could have been re-employed on related work.

I think this is an area where you would need to talk to a lawyer specialising in employment law, as there may be lots of technicalities that might trip up a claim. How long ago did this happen?

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I'll drop you an email.

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

A related area of employment legislation of course covers the area where a company outsources a function of its business and what rights the existing employees have during the transfer. It's obviously not healthy if companies
could use this strategy to effectively dump all its existing employees and then force them to re-join under less favourable terms. For public sector, TUPE legislation exists specifically to protect against this type of situation.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

My son found an extra thousand pounds in his bank account. After some consideration, he decided to do the honest thing and tell the bank.

He was led to believe that if no one claimed it within six months then he could have it, so he let them put it in a holding account while they tried to trace the owner.

It turns out that it was paid in as cash by a man whom the bank staff don't recognise from the security camera footage.

Now, (six months later) they claim he has no right to the money and the bank are going to keep it.

Can they do this?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

As far as I can see, the bank must be on dubious grounds. There is nothing to say that the person who paid in the money might not have wanted to give £1000 to your son by paying it into his bank account. If he was available to rebut that presumption then he would be entitled to his money back. But in the absence of that, it seems wrong to me that the bank assumes title of the money when it has been paid into your son's account.

Does your son have any written correspondence from the bank on this matter? It may be that a legal principle called 'estoppel' could come into play, preventing the bank from going back on their assurance to him.

Given the amount of money in question, I would suggest finding a local solicitor who does free initial consultations (very many do) and explaining the full situation, with any supporting evidence (bank statements, letters from the bank etc).

[watervole.livejournal.com]

There's no written correspondence at all. We just went into the local branch and talked to them.

I may take your advice about seeing a local solicitor, though I guess I'd better wait until Henry's back from university.

Thanks,

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

In the mean time, I would suggest that Henry writes a letter to the bank manager, going over everything that happened (with copies of bank statements), repeating the bank's initial advice to him and formally requesting that the bank returns the £1000 to his account. This should establish that you're not letting the issue drop, and should at least get the bank to state it's side of things.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

What restrictions are there on what you can do to a hosue if it's a Grade II listed building?

And on a more trivial front, is grade I more or less restrictive than grade II?

Listed Buildings

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

This is a very specialised area, not really fair to lay it on a non specialist (which I'm not- just someone who comes up against the regs way too often; and sometimes I think once is too often!).
This is somewhat esoteric, I suspect you're better off talking to the local planning people and subtracting about 5% from their answers.

In broad though there are three grades of listing, Grade II which retricts you from stone cladding the outside, putting in replacement UPVC windows, remodelling the interior in any structural fashion and such like without planning consent, and restricts the materials used in maintenance.
Grade II* which extends the scope of the above with additional wrinkles such as any replacement of rotting windows has to be replaced with period accurate windows (even if what you're removing is 1950's replacement tat) any changes to comply with modern HSE regulations must be 'de minimus' acceptable to the HSE but you WILL require planning permission (currently caught between access provision legislation, the conservation and the planning people, I feel like telling them 'Fight it out between yourselves, and when the turf war is over let me know')

Grade I is the top and extends the reach of the regulations significantly though to what extent I'm not 100% sure, though it does mean that fitting recessed ceiling lights is *out*

I'm serious about talking to the planning people, if nothing else you'll get better ideas about where to go from there.

Re: Listed Buildings

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this! M's question has been sitting in my 'look at this' tray for a while and I did dig out some of the above, but as you note it turns out to be a rather specialist area. I couldn't find any really good definition of the differences between I, II* and II, other than a note that you're more likely to get permission to use hazardous materials such as lead-based paint on a Grade I building if necessary for faithful restoration.

Re: Listed Buildings

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't find any really good definition of the differences between I, II* and II, other than a note that you're more likely to get permission to use hazardous materials such as lead-based paint on a Grade I building if necessary for faithful restoration.

I'm not sure there is one, a lot seems to rely on opinion.

The materials constraints start at the Grade II level, for example Lime plaster is actually far better for a brick built buildings structure than the modern equivelent, however it is significantly more expensive and requires more highly skilled/experienced craftsmen to lay. You *might* get away with modern plaster on many gradeII buildings, but don't count on it.

Re: Listed Buildings

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

Oops the above was me!