News

Two students in Italy have been fined €27 million by forest authorities after allegedly letting a barbecue start a forest fire. The administration sanction was handed down by the forestry service based on the area of land which was affected and its value per square metre.

Dozens of people who were allegedly involved in breaking bones and staging car accidents as part of a massive insurance fraud have been arrested. Thirty-four suspects are accused of taking part in a major scam whereby they inflicted serious injuries on people in exchange for part of their insurance

The former leader of the Scottish Labour Party who was accused of defamation over a newspaper article in which she described a social media comment published online by a pro-independence blogger as “homophobic” has successfully defended a legal action against her. Stuart Campbell, publis

Lawyers John Paul Sheridan and Karen Cornwell of TLT have been awarded specialist accreditation in professional negligence for a further five years by the Law Society of Scotland. The Society introduced the scheme in 1990 to recognise solicitors who have developed specialist knowledge during their c

Scottish law firm Burness Paull has reported profits of £23.8 million on turnover of £57.6 million for the year to July 2018. Latest results filed with Companies House have revealed the firm’s highest-earning partner enjoyed a profit share of £634,000 with

A new fully digital process for simple procedure cases is ready to be rolled out next Thursday, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) has said. Civil Online was initially introduced in March last year to allow parties to track the progress of cases in court and was further enhanced in Dec

A retired Supreme Court justice has said there is "no moral obligation to obey the law" in a major intervention over the legality of assisted suicide. Jonathan Sumption QC, who retired from the Supreme Court bench last December, said he believed the law "should be broken from time to time".

Alison McAteer, senior solicitor at Brodies LLP and president of Tomorrow’s FOIL (Forum of Insurance Lawyers), and Megan Lafferty, associate at Clyde & Co (Scotland LLP) and Scottish representative of Tomorrow's FOIL, write on the issues facing insurance lawyers in Scotland. In 2018, GDPR

Applications are now being invited for Faculty of Advocates scholarships which can help ease financial tensions during the training period for the Bar. Those hoping to begin devilling in 2020 are asked to submit applications by the end of this month, to be considered by the Faculty’s Scholarsh

Alyson Cowan, solicitor in the commercial real estate team at Morton Fraser, writes on the importance of limitation clauses in collateral warranties. The recently published judgment of O’Farrell J in Swansea Stadium Management Co. Ltd v Swansea City and County Council ([2018] EWHC 2192 (TCC))

The latest statistics from the UK House Price Index (HPI) show that the average price of a property in Scotland in February 2019 was £145,762 – a decrease of 0.2 per cent on February in the previous year. This is the first annual decrease in the average price of a property in Scotland si

Controversial UK government plans to bring in the world's first age-verification system for online pornography are set to come into force in July. The commencement of the relevant provisions of the Digital Economy Act 2017 has been repeatedly delayed, having originally been set for April 2018 and la

The UK's competition regulator has shied away from meaningful change of the accountancy industry after ignoring recommendations for a major shake-up in a move critics have described as a missed “golden opportunity”. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stopped short of callin

Police Scotland must ensure that all police officers receive appropriate training and guidance in assessing missing person reports, the Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC) has said. The watchdog has published a report which concludes that there was a delay in police going to the f

An English solicitor who said her professional reputation had been destroyed by a Facebook post has lost her £900,000 libel claim. The High Court in London ruled that lawyers for Dr Katherine Alexander-Theodotou, of Highgate Hill Solicitors, had not established that the post had caused "seriou