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There may be another installment in the Radmacher case, decided by the Supreme Court last year, after there have been suggestions that Mr. Granatino, who failed to overturn the pre-nuptial agreement between him and his wife, may be suing Ms. Radmacher’s solicitor, Simon Bruce, for libel on the basis of comments made by him after the decision was handed down. It is unclear exactly what the basis of the claim will be as the comments in question referred to Mr. Granatino as ‘an intelligent man…nobody’s fool’.
Sir Fred Goodwin, the former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has obtained a super-injunction to prevent him being identified as a banker. The existence of the injunction was revealed after a Liberal Democrat MP raised the matter in the Commons. The revelation has prompted further concerns over the use of such injunctions. A committee appointed last year to look into their use, chaired by Lord Neuberger, is due to present its findings before Easter.
The government has launched a new commission to look into the possibility of a British Bill of Rights. The Conservatives previously appointed a commission to look into the same question in 2007, but the resulting report was never published.
Lady Hale made the Guardian’s list of 100 inspiring women, published to mark International Women’s Day. The five other women in the legal category were Louise Arbour, Sonia Sotomayor, Gareth Pierce, Helena Kennedy and Jayshree Satpute. Meanwhile the Law Society Gazette has published findings of a survey suggesting that the majority of female lawyers believe that they are paid less than their male counterparts.
Cherie Blair QC, in an interview with the Guardian on the topic of widening access to the legal profession said that changes in fees mean that young people from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds have fewer opportunities to enter the law than when she studied. Blair hopes that private institutions will step in to reduce the impact of higher fees on individuals by sponsoring recruits through university, but acknowledged that getting Chambers’ to cooperate in such sponsorship schemes may be difficult.
There are concerns that the government is interfering with legal bodies, after three legal quangos, the Legal Services Board, LSCP and Legal Ombudsman (LeO) have been told by the Ministry of Justice to take their websites offline and replace them with government-approved sites by 31 March. But still, government interference in legal proceedings has not yet reached the heights of Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi approved changes that mean that Italian judges and prosecutors who make mistakes could be sued by defendants and made to pay damages. Berlusconi was due to appear in court the following day after the changes were approved, accused of buying favourable testimony.
