News

The Law Society of Scotland has criticised the Scottish government’s widely ridiculed Lobbying (Scotland) Bill, pointing out it fails to even include emails in the list of communications between companies and politicians that would need to be declared in a proposed lobbying register. The proposals

Philip Rodney Burness Paull LLP has secured its position as Scotland’s biggest and busiest transactional corporate law firm in Business Insider’s list of the top performing legal dealmakers.

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of a company which claimed a rival had infringed its design of a ride-on suitcase for children, affirming criticisms made by the Court of Appeal that the Community Registered Design (CRD) for the product was not simply a claim for a suitcase shape but for a

The niece of a woman who signed a deed disponing of her family home to other members of the family has been granted decree of reduction on the grounds that her aunt was “incapax” at the relevant date. A judge in the Court of Session ruled that the deceased “did not have the necessary capacity�

A property developer which sued two separate companies for breaches of contract after both failed to complete the purchase of an area of land has had an action based on joint and several liability dismissed as “incompetent”. A judge in the Court of Session observed that in order for joint and se

A challenge to the Scottish government's plan to appoint a named guardian to every child in the country will be heard in the Supreme Court today. Four charities and three individuals lodged an appeal after the Court of Session twice rejected their case. The Supreme Court hearing is expected to last

The Law Society of Scotland has said the effects of an additional tax on second homes should be monitored closely to ensure that people who are simply trying to move house are not caught out by the proposed new charge. The lawyers' body intervened ahead of the stage 3 debate on the Land and Building

Kenny Crawford A total of 97,701 residential property sales worth more than £16.5 billion took place across Scotland in 2015, according to new statistics from Registers of Scotland (RoS).

Graham Ogilvy The distribution of the Scottish Legal News Annual Review 2016 is expected to be concluded this week.

Mark Burgess DLA Piper will host a free seminar this Friday on the imminent changes to second home buying following the introduction of the extra charge for buy-to-let properties and second homes which was supported by MSPs last month.

A trial at Stirling Sheriff Court was abandoned last week after a witness was approached in the pub by a juror, The Courier reports. The trial of Alexander McKinlay, 28, over the alleged abduction of his ex-girlfriend was brought to a premature end and a fresh trial was ordered by Sheriff Wylie Robe

An aspiring US lawyer is taking her law school to court for allegedly inflating figures relating to the number of its graduates in employment. Anna Alaburda, 37, is the first law graduate to take her school to court over employment figures, The New York Times reports.

Independent MP Natalie McGarry has been asked to apologise and make a charitable donation after falsely accusing the leader of a political campaign of being a Holocaust denier. A spokesperson for the Scotland in Union group said it wanted Ms McGarry to issue a "suitable apology" after tweets she mad

In an article headlined "Claim by way of plea is ‘effective’ to interrupt prescription in relation to an obligation", published in yesterday's edition of Scottish Legal News, we mistakenly referred to the defender in a case as Lady Iam Hazel Virginia Whitehouse-Christ-Grant. The defender's name

A claim made by way of a plea is a “relevant claim” sufficient to interrupt the running of the five-year prescription period, appeal judges have ruled. The Inner House of the Court of Session held that a claim need not be made by a formal conclusion or counterclaim, in a case was about a dispute