Author Archives: Edward McGarr
Work Accidents
If you are injured at work, it is extremely likely that your employer is responsible for the accident. It is one of the duties of your employer that he/she provide you with a safe place of work.
Piltdown Man
It is highly speculative, but an attractive thought, that the Zeitgeist of the early twentieth century produced or induced two events; the development of the modern law of Negligence and the perversion of truth by the Piltdown Man hoax. They are connected in one respect; a lawyer was at the centre of each event. Lord Atkin, in the House of Lords, delivered the seminal judgement in Donoghue v Stevenson, and Charles Dawson, a solicitor, “found” the skull of Piltdown Man […]
Ango Irish Bank Corporation (1)
What we know is that a sense of grievance in shareholders is not, itself, a spur to action. After all, if the sense of grievance springs from the loss in value of the Anglo Irish Bank shares, it has a weak foundation. Did they not know of the Anglo Irish Bank “business model”? Is it not the failure of that model that has caused the major part of the shareholder loss?
Charlie Chaplin and Ingenuity?
It happened in 1932, in Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562. The defence in the case relied on the fact that the Plaintiff had no privity of contract with the Defendant. She, the Plaintiff had consumed some of the contents of a bottle of ginger beer. She discovered what she perceived as the remains of a decomposing snail in the bottom of the bottle and became ill as a consequence. She had been given the beer by the purchaser.
12th January 9 A.D.
In the face of power, formally judicial or otherwise, it is necessary to be circumspect.
12th January 1943
On 12th January 1943 the German 6th Army was trapped (approximately 190,000 men at that point) at Stalingrad. The Soviet Union had launched counter-offensives code named Uranus and Saturn (followed, later, by Mars).
A New Year Resolution
The justification for this notion (that the State should be favoured) is the supposed need for certainty in public administration. This is a peculiar idea in this context; Prohibition, Mandamus, Quo Warranto or Certiorari do not present opportunity for an appeal. They challenge the legal base of the administrative action, not the correctness of the decision. A judge is not asked in these applications to substitute his/her view for that of the Executive. The judge is asked to check a legal error.
Health Care Settings?
The Hospital argued that the pleadings in the action alleged a defect with, or in, a forceps used in the Hospital. It argued that a claim that a forceps was defective was not a medical negligence claim (“…the correctness or otherwise of the surgical procedure being carried out”), but was a defective product claim.
The Madoff Mess
Financial management is, reputedly, a highly regulated field. Whether that is so in Ireland is already in doubt. The Madoff Mess may show the truth of the situation. That aside, Ireland’s financial regulatory laws make provision for claims in civil law for breaches of certain duties imposed by statute. The facts of each case will determine if these are available to investors to recover their losses.