Month: June 2010

From one of my favourite fun blogs, Being Five, a cartoon strip called The Artist:

Being Five is a comic strip about a kid named Georgie who blogs using voice recognition software (since he can’t read or write yet). In the first panel, his friend Vince is visiting, and Georgie introduces introduces him as the best artist in kindergarten.
In the second panel, Vince says that he wants to be called Picasso in future.
In the third panel, Georgie says: “Ok, here’s a picture by the Artist formerly known as Vince”.

The notoriously litigious artist now once again known as Prince has of late been on the receiving end of an action for breach of contract in Ireland. (more…)

My attention was drawn today to the fascinating decision of Feeney J in Criminal Assets Bureau v J W P L [2007] IEHC 177 (24 May 2007), in which the nature of an action for restitution of unjust enrichment was discussed. The basic question was whether the common law action in unjust enrichment was analogous to a statutory action taken by the the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) to confiscate a defendant’s “corrupt enrichment”. In the event, Feeney J held that since any enrichment of the defendant would not usually (or at all) be at the expense of the plaintiff, the common law claim to restitution of an unjust enrichment would not be made out where the statutory action to recover a corrupt enrichment would be, the claims were not analogous with one another. In which case, it would probably have been better to have avoided the issue in the first place by describing the statutory action in different terms, perhaps by using a simpler synonym for “enrichment” such as “gain” – after all, the aim of the proceeds of crime legislation is to get at criminals’ ill-gotten gains.
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From the excellent ECJblog, I discover a fascinating case about the principles of restitution in EU law (emphasis added):

Case C-470/08, Kornelis van Dijk v Kampen

Since 1982, Mr van Dijk had leased from the Dutch Municipality of Kampen (pictured right) a number of parcels of agricultural land … The lease between the two parties did not contain any clauses relating to the income supported scheme or payment entitlements.

For a number of years Mr van Dijk had received … [various EU] compensatory payments … A dispute arose between Mr van Dijk and the Gemeente Kampen regarding the nature and the extent of the obligations under the lease. The referring court essentially asked whether Community law required a lessee, on the expiry of the lease, to deliver to the lessor the leased land along with the payment entitlements accumulated thereon or relating thereto, or to pay him compensation.

The Court held that … payment entitlements remained with the lessee on the expiry of the lease … [the relevant schemes] did not contain any obligation on farmers who had leased land to transfer their payment entitlements to the lessor on the expiry of the lease.

The Court held that, in accordance with the principles common to the laws of the Member States, the right to restitution from the person enriched was conditional upon there being no valid legal basis for the enrichment at issue (Case C-47/07 P Masdar (UK) v Commission [2008]).

It could not be considered that the payment entitlements which a farmer enjoyed were devoid of any legal basis in so far as they were attributed to him in accordance with the provisions of [a] Regulation … Therefore, the Court concluded that Community law did not require a lessee, on the expiry of the lease, to deliver to the lessor the leased land, including the payment entitlements accumulated thereon or relating thereto, or to pay him compensation.

A few weeks ago, the Science Gallery in TCD hosted a fascinating event on the chilling impact of the law of libel on scientific debate. Chaired by Myles Dungan, the speakers were Simon Singh, who successfully defended a two year libel battle with the British Chiropractic Association, his lawyer Robert Dougans, cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst who is currently being sued for libel in the biggest ongoing medical libel case, and his lawyer Mark Lewis. A video of the event is now up on YouTube.

The cases against Singh and Wilmshurst are English, but, as an article in today’s Irish Times shows, Irish law is to the same effect:
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I wrote a little while ago about a conference on Restitution of Overpaid Tax, which will be held in Merton College Oxford on the weekend of Friday 9 and Saturday 10 July 2010. Advance copies of the papers for the conference are being published on the new papers page as they become available. The page is password-protected; and delegates who have registered for the conference will be supplied with a password.

Registration for the conference will close on Thursday 24 June 2010 at 5:00pm. If you are interested in attending, please register before then.