Some interesting Legal facts (Part 1)

1.         If your terms and conditions are printed on the back of an invoice they don’t apply to the contract unless the parties have dealt with each other before over a “regular course of dealings”.

Lloyd Barrett
legal advice online

2.         Speeding is what is known as “an offence of strict liability”. This means that if you travel at 31 mph in a 30 area you commit an offence. It means that there is no defence to it. It doesn’t matter that your partner is on the back seat of the car about to have a baby, you have got diarrhoea, your car is on fire and you’re trying to get it off the motorway. You still are committing an offence. You may have what is known as “mitigation” or “mitigating circumstances” but you do not have a defence. There is no defence for speeding. Mitigating circumstances simply mean that you have a reasonable excuse.

3.         The definition of theft is “appropriation of property: belonging to another: with the intent to permanently deprive:”. Unless all elements are present then it is not theft. So, if someone you don’t even know borrows your lawnmower and leaves a note which says, “I have borrowed your lawnmower to mow my lawn and I will bring it back tomorrow”, that person hasn’t actually done anything wrong! Ironic but true. He doesn’t intend to permanently deprive you of the lawnmower because he says he is bringing it back. No offence. No point calling the police.

4.         If you walk through the middle of a farmer’s field then that’s trespass. However the remedy for trespass is damages (compensation). However to get compensation you have to have suffered loss. So, if all you have done is simply walked across the grass there is nothing that Mr Farmer can do. If you damage crops then that is another matter and you are liable to be prosecuted for criminal damage. Criminal damage is another subject altogether.

5.         If a parking or speeding ticket has an obviously wrong date on or has the colour of your car wrong or has the registration number written incorrectly don’t think that you can necessarily get off on a technicality. If the registration number on the certificate is down as ABC123 and it should be ACB123 then Magistrates are likely to allow this under what is known as “slip rule” which allows minor errors in paperwork to be admitted. You can try it, but it won’t work.

6.         If you buy a house with someone on a joint mortgage and they go bankrupt then you remain liable for the whole mortgage. In addition, their half of the house (if it’s worth anything) then belongs to the trustee in bankruptcy. Ironically enough the trustee in bankruptcy doesn’t have to contribute to the mortgage but can take any proceeds such as rent. Think carefully before you buy a house with anybody else if they are not of excellent financial standing.

7.         If you rent a house you are usually required to pay a deposit. Since the 1^st April 2009 the landlord must put this in a Tenants Deposit Scheme. If the Landlord doesn’t then the legislation provides for a Tenant whose landlord hasn’t put a deposit into such a scheme to get three times the amount of the deposit as compensation. This does not mean that if the Landlord hasn’t put your £500 deposit into a scheme you get £1500 back. It means that if you have suffered any loss as a result of the Landlords failure to put the money in a scheme then he is liable to pay you compensation in respect of his failure. Please note that in English Law, to get compensation, you have to have suffered loss so that means that if you were to get £1500 compensation (for your £500 deposit) you have to have suffered £1500 worth of loss.
English Law does not punish it compensates.

8.         Technically, there is no such thing as an accident. Have you noticed that road traffic accidents are no longer called road traffic accidents but are called RTC’s (road traffic collisions)? This is because nothing ever happens accidentally. If there has been a collision between two vehicles for example it has been caused by the negligence by either one party or the other. Sometimes they are equally to blame but, none the less, they have both been negligent.

9.         There is no such thing as a joint will. There is what is known as a “mirror will” where by two parties leave all their worldly wealth’s to each other in the same terms.

10.       If you write a will leaving everything to your spouse and then get divorced that money/those assets, which you left to your spouse will pass into the residue of the estate. Similarly, if you write a will leaving everything to the cat’s home and then get married, the will is void in its entirety.

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Please note the above does not constitute legal advice and used here for illustration purposes only.

Lloyd Barrett
Expert Answers

The following article might help you when have a problem and need to decide if it is worth going to court to get justice. Going to court for justice might not be as straight forward as you might think.

My Learned Friend (Learn-“ed” means that he is a Barrister and has obviously learned a lot, unlike the rest of us, who presumably are un-learn-ed and therefore know very little) once said to me that there are two things you should never see being made:- Law and sausages. Why sausages I have no idea. Never having seen sausages made, and quite liking some of the more interesting varieties that are now available, and in continuing pursuit of my gastronomic enjoyment I think I am going to avoid seeing sausages made.

What my friend actually meant was, “avoid going to Court to see law being enforced”. Why? Because quite simply, going to Court is a risky business. A very risky business. Never go to Court “on a principle”. Principles too can be expensive.

Sometimes, there is no alternative than to go to Court. It doesn’t matter what your rights are and whether, in law, (under the Sale of Goods Act or whatever) a shop is supposed to refund you your money back, the fact remains that if they won’t, you are faced with Court. True, Trading Standards do provide an excellent service and often resolve these matters but Trading Standards only offer consumer advice by and large. They won’t usually help if, for example, the problem is with something you bought for your business. (No doubt I will get every TS Dept in the country calling me next week to tell me that I am wrong).

Fortunately, civil matters are decided by the Court, “on the balance of probabilities”. What does that mean? It means quite simply that if the Judge believes your version 1% more than the other person, you win. The Judge can only make a decision based upon the facts presented and he must make a decision one way or the other. So, if your evidence is 51% convincing and the other side’s evidence is only 49% convincing then you win. Simples.

Criminal matters on the other hand are decided “beyond all reasonable doubt”. What does that mean?

It means that there has to be no doubt in the Magistrates or the jury’s mind that you committed whatever offence it is you stand accused of.

Why the difference? If someone is found guilty of a criminal offence, they may be deprived of their liberty (sent to jail). In the olden days they may have been hanged. Now whilst you can let somebody out of jail, hanging them is pretty final. I think you are probably beginning to get the picture.

But why avoid going to Court? Well for a criminal matter it is probably rather obvious but for a civil matter perhaps not so. If you are being prosecuted for a criminal offence your legal costs are usually met by the Legal Aid Fund. This is not the case in most civil matters. If you lose in anything other than the Small Claims Court you will usually have to pay not only your own legal costs but also the costs of the winner. True that if you win you can get a Costs Order for the loser to pay your costs but if the loser hasn’t got the money to pay then not only do you not get what you are claiming you also have to pay your own legal bill. A double whammy!

Negotiation is the key, well it used to be the key, but now mediation is the key. Same thing. You can get further with a kind word than with a gun. Of course, negotiations often break down and then you are faced with walking away or Court.

Given the choice I would rather watch sausages being made!

Watch as the two brave entrepreneurs from Expert Answers the online legal advice website meet the dragons.

Lloyd Barrett

Lloyd Barrett

will be ethnic minorities, women, disabled, single parents and those on lower incomes: all people who tend to have complicated debt, housing and welfare issues.

The effects of the benefit cuts totalling £7billion announced in the recent Comprehensive Spending Review, on top of the £11 billion already announced as part of the Emergency Budget last year, will be far reaching. Inevitable cuts to public services, along with the cuts in welfare and tax credits spending, will have an adverse impact on many benefit claimants. Those on the lowest incomes, women and families will be hardest hit by the combined effect of these changes.

The Law Centres Federation has calculated that law centres will lose £5m or 55% of their Legal Aid funding under the government’s green paper proposals. Some law centres will be forced to close. They will be hit by a 30% cut in local authority funding and a 50% cut in central government grants. This will result in a reduction in the number of clients they can deal with from 120,000 to only 50,000. These cuts will reduce further access to free legal advice.

The network of Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABs) will see a dramatic cut in their funding, potentially reducing the number of matters they can deal with and questions they can answer: they addressed 7.1 million problems in 2009/10. The impact of the cuts can only be guessed at, but conservatively some CAB’s could see a 50% decrease in their budgets, leaving 3.5 million problems unresolved. In the last year CAB showed a 4% rise in enquiries, with Housing showing an increase of 14%. These groups typically are most likely not able to afford to pay for high street prices for legal advice.

The Government is also proposing an overhaul of the way in which Legal Aid is funded. This will see Legal Aid cut for divorce cases, welfare benefits issues, school exclusion appeals, employment issues and clinical negligence compensation claims.

The Government is to cut the Legal Aid bill by £350million in 2012. Society’s most vulnerable people will be unfairly affected and thousands of people will be unable to pursue legitimate cases. In some CAB offices, Legal Aid fees make up a high proportion of income, meaning some CAB offices may even have to shut if the changes to legal aid go ahead.

The eligibility rules for Legal Aid are set to change, which will negatively impact 1 in 10 Legal Aid clients. Under the new scheme, people will be expected to contribute 30% of their weekly income, up from 20%. This means that many people won’t be able to pursue their case through the courts. Thousands of people will no longer be eligible at all.

According to the Citizens Advice Bureau, these changes “…would take whole areas of law ‘out of scope’ – including welfare benefits and employment. Advice on housing and debt would be restricted to cases with an ‘immediate risk’ of homelessness and help with many family law issues would only be available in cases of domestic violence.”

15% of all CAB income comes from Legal Aid and there are many other not-for-profit organisations which will also be affected by the proposed changes.

The social, economic and political aspects of the provision of Legal Aid in the UK means that there is an ever increasing need for affordable, accessible, accurate and timely legal advice.

As for technology, use of the Internet as a source of information is ubiquitous. According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 19.2 million households with an Internet connection in 2010, representing 73 per cent of households. The region with the highest level of access was London, with 83 per cent; the lowest was the North East, with 59 per cent.

When adults were asked why their household did not have an Internet connection, the most common response was that they didn’t need it, at 39 per cent, followed by 21 per cent who said a lack of skills prevented them from having the Internet. The Home Access programme launched by the Labour Government (and now closed) enabled 270,000 low income families to get access to a computer and the internet.

The next stage is to help people see the internet as a source of knowledge, not just information. Knowledge is gained from experience and the interpretation of information. Technology underpins this initiative, enabling us to seek advice from wherever the expert happens to be, and dispensing it to wherever the customer happens to be.

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42. If you take somebody to court and it is allocated to the Small Claims Track (under £5000) and you lose then usually you will only pay any court costs and not legal costs. This is to encourage people not to instruct solicitors on small value claims and encourage mediation/settling out of court.

43. If someone transfers their house to (for example) their children in anticipation of going into a nursing home then the local authority can still sell the house (even though it now belongs to somebody else) to pay for care fee’s. There is actually no timescale after which the house is safe from the local authority but the golden rule is “the longer the better”.

44. A bus driver can refuse to accept anything other than the correct fare and can also refuse to give change. You are of course at liberty not to take up the bus driver’s kind offer to take a £10 note off you for a 10p fare. In that particular case you have no absolute right to travel.

45. Some criminal convictions do not have to be disclosed after a certain period of time under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Criminal convictions of 2.5 years or more are never spent for the purposes of the act and are always discloseable if you are asked. Some convictions are never spent under the ROOA for certain occupations such as banking, teaching, the legal profession, accounting etc to name a few.

46. If you park in an area which is “pay and display” and the machine is broken you still commit an offence, parking without paying the fee. You may be able to plead mitigation but none the less, you have committed an offence. Strictly speaking, you should find another machine and pay at that one.

47. Land Law’s in England & Wales and Northern Ireland are very similar although the procedures vary somewhat. Land Law in Scotland is completely different and uses completely different terminology.

48. English solicitors can practice law in England and Wales but not in Northern Ireland or Scotland. Similarly, Scottish lawyers can only act in Scotland and Northern Irish lawyers only in Northern Ireland.

49. If you take on the lease of a building and there is VAT on the rent and the value of the lease means that it is subject to stamp duty land tax then you pay stamp duty land tax on the VAT. Yes, you actually pay tax on tax which you have had to pay.

50. If you die, your debts do not necessarily die with you. If you leave no assets money or house then your debts can die with you. If you leave any assets etc then your creditors have first call on them to pay any debts before any beneficiaries.

Get online legal advice from qualified , barristers, solicitors and legal experts. Ask solicitors legal questions get an Expert Answer within minutes. Need to know about driving without MOT and how it affects your insurance. Ask them and they will answer.

Lloyd Barrett

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