I talk to US lawyer, Peter Friedman, Of Counsel at Hull McGuire PC, about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the potential civil and criminal liability for News Corporation if the FBI investigation reveals any wrongdoing.
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I’d like to thank Lawtel, Westlaw, Cassons For Counsel, City University Law School, David Phillips & Partners Solicitors, Inksters Solicitors, Iken, LBC Wise Counsel, Carrs Solicitors, JMW Solicitors – Manchester, Pannone and Cellmark for sponsoring the podcast – and the free student materials on Insite Law – appreciated.
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Great show as always – you are really spoiling us with these podcasts lately.
I was surprised at David’s view that Parliament cannot summon a foreign national, if acting with the power of the Queen-in-Parliament. In law there are no limits to Parliament’s powers: the traditional example is that Parliament could (in law) ban smoking in the streets of Paris if it wanted to. The reason it cannot do so in reality is because of practical constraints, not lack of legal power. I would have thought a summoning of a foreign national who is abroad would be analagous to this: it is legally valid and the national would be in breach of the order if it was ignored, but in practice it could not enforced until they entered the country. The only question would be whether a Select Committee is actually acting with the authority of the Queen-in-Parliament, or merely exercising a lesser power. But David assumed it was the Q-i-P, which is why that view surprised me.
Informative and entertaining show as always.
As someone who works in the After-the-Event insurance world, it is good to see you highlighting this part of the Legal Aid etc Bill, which has enjoyed little visibility sitting as it does between high-profile legal aid changes and sentencing issues.
There is certainly an issue with access to justice in media/privacy issues should the current regime end; whilst these cases are important to society in general, they touch the lives of very few of us directly.
Of much more concern should be the effect of these proposals in for example clinical negligence cases. Requiring claimants to pay a healthy percentage of their general damages (which are supposed to be compensation for their loss) sounds like poor justice to me. And that supposes that lawyers wil be prepared to run cases on a no-win no-fee for this reduced reward. Measures that profess to cut costs in a time of austerity run the risk of removing the ability to get compensation from thousands of wronged individuals.
To borrow a previous column title from one of your contributors – Bad Law!
(All views are mine and not necessarily those of my employer.)