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On Monday and Tuesday, a five judge bench will to hear the appeal in ZN (Afghanistan) v Entry Clearance Officer.  The Court originally consisted of Lords Phillips, Rodger, Kerr, Clarke and “Justice 12”.  However, due to the protracted appointment process (see our post here), this last justice is not available and Lord Collins is now the fifth member of the Court.  Our case preview can be found here.

Lords Hope, Hale, Brown, Collins and Kerr will be handing down the judgment in Tomlinson v Birmingham City Council on Wednesday 17 February 2010. The case concerns Birmingham City Council’s refusal to provide local authority accommodation to three homeless people, although the actual question before the Supreme Court was whether the appellants’ Article 6 rights (to a fair and public hearing) were breached by the process followed by Birmingham City Council, pursuant to the Housing Act 1996.

The Court will have to decide between conflicting decisions made by the ECHR and the House of Lords. The full case preview by Olswang’s Oliver Gayner can be read here .

As noted in our post earlier this week the most important “information development” of the last Supreme Court week has been the provision of a list of Permission to Appeal decisions. The Court’s continuing IT problems mean that this is not linked to the “Current Cases” function but is, rather, in the form of a PDF.  The full permissions list enables us to calculate that there appear to be at least 32 appeals pending before the court along with the 9 cases which have been heard and in which judgment is awaited.  This can be contrasted with the “Current Cases” list on the Court’s website which shows only 24 cases – 3 of which are no longer “current” (judgments having been given) and 2 of which are pending permission applications .  In other words (taking into account the pending permission applications), there should be 43 “current” cases (plus those in which applications for permission are pending), whereas in fact there are only 21.   We do not know why the missing 22+ cases are not listed.  Can we suggest another PDF on the website pending resolution of the IT issues?

For the fourth consecutive week the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has no appeals listed for the forthcoming week.  However, the Judicial Committee has taken the opportunity to catch up with some judgments in appeals which were heard last term.  Judgments in four appeals have been announced for Wednesday 17 February by a “hand down bench” of Lord Hope, Lord Collins and Lord Clarke.  The appeals, all of which are from the Caribbean are as follows:  Theresa Henry v Calixtus Henry: an appeal relating to an interest in an undivided piece of rural agricultural land in St Lucia;   Sherman McNicholls v Judicial and Legal Service Commission: an appeal relating to the disciplinary charges against the Chief Magistrate of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago;  Keith O’Connor v Paul Haufmann Percival Piccott and another: an appeal relating to the sale of property in Kingston, Jamaica;  Philmore Jarvis v Shoppers Pharmacy (Antigua and Barbuda): an appeal relating to the unfair dismissal from employment of a pharmacist and whether in fact the contract of employment was void for uncertainty.
 
Judgments
 
After the recently announced hand downs the following Supreme Court judgments will remain outstanding:
 
Agbaje v Akinnoye-Agbaje, heard 3-4 Nov 2009
Norris v Government of United States, heard 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2009
RTS Flexible Systems v Muller, heard 2-3 Dec 2009
R (JS Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, heard 13-14 Jan 2010
R (Lewis) v Redcar and Cleveland BC, heard 18, 19 and 20 Jan 2010.
R (Sainsbury’s) v Wolverhampton City Council, heard 1-2 Feb 2010
R (JF) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, heard 3 -4 Feb 2010
R (SK) (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, heard 10-11 Feb 2010
 
The following Privy Council judgments are awaited:
 
Prime Minister of Belize v Vellos, heard 18 January 2010
Tibbetts v A-G of Cayman Islands, heard 21 January 2010