RATHER than buying goods outright, retailers often find it convenient to receive goods under a “sale or return” arrangement. These agreements are not contracts of sale, but rather bailment arrangements that give the bailee the right either to buy or to reject the goods. A sale or return contract may require that the right to reject can be exercised only by the bailee physically returning any unwanted goods; however, in the absence of an express stipulation to this effect, these contracts are generally construed to require merely that the bailee give notice of rejection and make the goods available for collection by the bailor. The question then arises: what form must this notice take, and at what stage must the goods be made available for collection? These matters were considered by the Court of Appeal in Atari Corporation (U.K.) Ltd. v. Electronics Boutique Stores (U.K.) Ltd. [1998] 2 W.L.R. 66.

HUNTING with hounds raises fierce passions, which blaze both on and off the field. In our ever more litigious society, it was practically inevitable that these passions would lead to litigation. So it was that the National Trust's decision to stop stag hunting on its estates in Somerset and Devon came to be challenged in court. In Scott v. National Trust [1998] 2 All E.R. 705, Robert Walker J. had to deal with various tactical applications arising in the challenge to the National Trust's decision: his Lordship's judgment was not intended to, and did not, come even close to an opinion on the vexed question of stag hunting itself.

Bolitho v. City and Hackney Health Authority [1997] 3 W.L.R. 1151 is a landmark authority on medical negligence, chiefly in respect of the standard of care.

WITH the imminent incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the recent publication of the Report of the Neill Committee on Standards in Public Life (Cm 4057), these are exciting, if fluid, times for those with an interest in party political funding. In tandem these initiatives will begin the long overdue process of reform to the law and practice of elections in the UK. A key difficulty awaiting the new regime is one long familiar to many other Western democracies, namely how to regulate election spending whilst preserving the integrity of an entrenched right to freedom of expression, a question recently considered by the European Court of Human Rights in Bowman v. UK (141/1996/762/959).

In Attorney-General's Reference (No. 3 of 1994) [1997] 3 W.L.R. 421, the House of Lords was faced with the question whether an assault on a pregnant woman, where the violence was directed at the woman or her unborn child, may result in liability for homicide should the assault cause the death of the child after live birth.

A fundamental tension underlies English law's approach to antisuit injunctions. Justice may warrant protecting a defendant from oppressive proceedings in a foreign forum by ordering the plaintiff to desist. But such relief challenges a foreign court's right to police its own process. How can the demands of justice and of comity be reconciled? When should concern for the one give way to respect for the other? Perhaps because antisuit relief reflects wider equitable principles, the prevention of injustice has long been the overriding imperative in such cases. But English courts are increasingly sensitive to the charge of chauvinism and respect for comity has become a real consideration in shaping their approach.

In Hunter v. British Coal Corporation [1998] 2 All E.R. 97 an employee, Mr. Hunter, hit a high pressure water hydrant with the vehicle he was driving at the time, fracturing the hydrant and thereby threatening to flood the mine. One of his fellow employees, Mr. Carter, attempted to help him shut off the valve. They did not succeed and Mr. Hunter went to fetch further assistance. When he was 30 yards away the hydrant exploded, killing Mr. Carter. Mr. Hunter initially assumed that Mr. Carter was unharmed, but when he was informed of the death 15 minutes later he blamed himself and suffered a shock which triggered a two-year depressive illness. The trial judge found as a fact that the accident (and the death) had been caused by the fault of the defendant employer, which had failed to observe the relevant regulations about the siting of the hydrant, and had not been caused or contributed to by Mr. Hunter in any way. Could Mr. Hunter recover damages from his employer for the shock which he suffered on hearing about a death which he did not witness but for which he felt himself to be responsible? The trial judge held not and the majority of the Court of Appeal agreed, but their reasoning demonstrates some of the confusion surrounding this topic. It was accepted by all members of the Court of Appeal that if Mr. Hunter was classified as a secondary victim he would fail in his claim for nervous shock since he lacked, amongst other things, the necessary physical proximity required by the House of Lords in Alcock: he had witnessed neither the accident itself nor its aftermath. The only way in which he could recover was if he could bring himself within some other category, either (i) because he could be regarded as a primary victim or (ii) purely on the basis of the contractual duty of care which the defendant owed him as his employer.

Until recently, it was not certain whether or not the malicious procurement of the issue and execution of a search warrant was an actionable tort. Indeed, the only reported successful claim for damages in English law in such an action was the ancient case of Elsee v. Smith (1822) 2 Chit. 304. However, judicial confirmation of the existence of the tort has finally been given in a landmark Privy Council case, Brian Gibbs and others v. John Mitchell Rea (The Times, 4 February 1998).

THE imposition of a £10 fine for violating a no-smoking ban on a train to Brighton is an unlikely start for a decision of major constitutional importance–even when the incendiary incident occurred, as here, on 5 November. Nevertheless, Boddington v. British Transport Police [1998] 2 W.L.R. 639 has provided the House of Lords with the opportunity to deliver a strong affirmation of a defendant's right to raise the validity of the administrative action which has resulted in his prosecution as a defence in criminal proceedings.

ON a pleasant evening in Darwin, Australia, in April 1987 Nadia Romeo went with her friends to a popular spot, the Dripstone Cliffs, for a beach party. She was nearly 16 and had little experience of alcohol, but she and a friend consumed about 150ml of rum in 90 minutes. At about 11.45 pm both she and her friend fell over the edge of the cliffs onto the beach below and Nadia suffered high-level paraplegia. Neither of the girls had any recollection of the circumstances in which they fell, but there was an area of eroded ground at the top of the cliffs that might have appeared to the girls as a path to the beach below (although it did not have this appearance in daylight, nor would it have appeared this way to a sober, alert person on the night). In short, it appears that they either walked over the edge with their heads in the air or attempted to jump to the beach below (nearly 20 feet) and woefully misjudged the distance. None the less, Ms Romeo decided to sue the Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory. Although she lost in every court, the 5–2 majority decision of the High Court of Australia in Romeo v. Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory (1998) 72 A.L.J.R. 208 will give little comfort to public bodies responsible for the control and management of land.

In their judgment in Alfred McAlpine Construction Ltd. v. Panatown Ltd. (The Times, 11 February 1998), the Court of Appeal has added yet another to the list of explanations for the rule in Dunlop v. Lambert (1839) 6 Cl. & F. 600; 7 E.R. 824. There, the House of Lords held that, where goods had been lost at sea, a consignor could recover substantial damages even though the goods, by the time of the loss, had become the property of the consignee. Since then, it has generally been accepted that the same result follows even though the consignee has neither title, risk, nor an immediate right to possession of the goods. It has also generally been assumed that the consignor holds the damages for the benefit of the true owner.

In all good spy stories, the double agent is ultimately thwarted by a powerful new weapon. The Court of Appeal is evidently familiar with the genre, for in Attorney-General v. Blake [1998] 1 All E.R. 833 it fashioned and deployed one new legal device against the Russian spy George Blake and plotted the re-commissioning of another, generally regarded as defunct.

CYNICS were unimpressed by the proclamation of the Court of Appeal in Re MB (Caesarean section) [1997] 2 F.C.R. 541 (noted [1997] C.L.J. 509) that the law protects a pregnant woman's right to autonomy and bodily integrity. The Court of Appeal had held that it would be unlawful for a doctor to perform a Caesarean section on a competent woman if she refused to consent to the operation–even if the lives of the woman and unborn child would be endangered if the operation was not performed. Cynics argued that the courts would always circumvent these fine-sounding principles by finding the woman incompetent to make the decision, as they did in Re MB itself. However, subsequently in St. George's Healthcare NHS Trust v. S [1998] 3 All E.R. 673 the Court of Appeal held that a woman was competent and that a doctor acted unlawfully in carrying out a Caesarean section on her. The NHS Trust and doctors were therefore potentially liable in tort for trespass and perhaps even guilty of criminal offences.

The law has long had to grapple with the person who owns a business but entrusts the running of it to a front man (or “front company”) while he himself remains hidden in the background. The problem is that the ostensible owner may be not worth suing, or that a customer's right of action may lie against him alone so as to prevent it being set-off against a claim by the true owner. Sometimes the law of agency may be available to remedy this situation by attaching liability to the actual business owner: but not always. This article suggests the possibility of using the doctrine of estoppel as a more general means of achieving the same object.