News & Legal Updates

The Food and Drink industry is fast-moving and constantly evolving with a significant focus on scientific innovation and development in order to build sustainable food systems. Sharing of data and sophisticated technology through joint ventures or acquisitions is becoming increasingly more common in order to meet the changing preferences of the consumer. The ingredients sector … Continue reading "Scotland aims to be the home to the world’s most exciting food & drink industry"

Football: a business like no other. Take, for example, the Transfer window. The countdown is on to Transfer deadline day and a variety of sources, from the back pages to Mr Deadline Day himself, Jim White, are bringing us breaking news, gossip and rumours about the possible comings and goings of players and done deals … Continue reading "Don’t get caught offside by following football’s lead"

In this day and age tax avoidance schemes are barely out of the news. The schemes, although they may not be moral, are legal. Tax avoidance is when an individual or company arranges their assets to minimise tax liability. On the other hand, tax evasion is the illegal non-payment of tax...

As a solicitor practising in Scots law and specialising in dealing with contentious personal and corporate insolvency cases, I am regularly asked about the differences in the personal and corporate insolvency processes between Scotland and England & Wales. There is often an assumption that the processes and law relative to these regimes is the same … Continue reading "Personal and Corporate Insolvency Law and the differences in regimes between Scotland and England & Wales"

2020 starts with a bang for Employment Law Employment Tribunal hold that Ethical Veganism falls within scope of Equality Act 2010 Veganism has risen rapidly to its current position in today’s mainstream society.  From the presence of plant-based food festivals nationwide to the large food chains adapting their menus to cater to vegans, taking notice … Continue reading "Employment Tribunal hold that Ethical Veganism falls within scope of Equality Act 2010"

In Scotland, when a company is dissolved, it is removed from the Register of Companies (‘the Register’). A company is a special type of entity in Scotland: it has its own legal persona, can own property, be involved in legal claims and can pursue debts owed to it amongst other actions normally attributed to natural persons. Once removed from the Register, the company ceases to exist and in doing so, all rights that it has are similarly eradicated. For the most part, this does not cause many problems as most companies have little to no assets at the time of dissolution – hence the fact that the dissolution has usually been allowed or at least not objected to by its members.

Is your staff handbook intended to be contractual and therefore binding on your employees? If not, make this clear to your staff. Employers need to take note of the decision in Sparks and others v Department for Transport [2016] All ER (D) 94 (Apr) where it was decided that a provision contained in a staff handbook was contractual and therefore binding on both the employee and the employer. In this case, the employer’s staff handbook contained a part which expressly stated that it was incorporated as contractual. When the employer sought to “vary” this part of the handbook, the Court of Appeal ruled that since the “variation” was detrimental to the employees, this was not a permitted change to the policy. The courts ruled that this part of the handbook could only be amended in accordance with the contract terms or by consensus of the employees.

As my colleague Simon recently highlighted in his article Why I HATE the Office Christmas Party, ‘tis the season to be careful. As an employment lawyer I get, without fail, a handful of calls every year from clients who have been involved in some form of unwanted behaviour at festive functions. By far and away the most common complaint is one of sexual harassment; the curious case of the booze fuelled, ill judged, wandering hands (or words).

Clients often presume (quite understandably) that foreign judgements (i.e. non-Scottish) are automatically recognised in Scotland and thus can be immediately enforced against a person or their assets in Scotland. They are therefore quite surprised to find out that foreign judgements cannot, in fact, be so enforced and that a ‘registration’ process must first be completed … Continue reading "Enforcement of Foreign Judgements in Scotland"

Let’s get ‘Back to Basics’ and strip back Employment Law in a series of short but informative blogs.  In this blog, I will cover the rights of employees when they are being dismissed. Sorry Lord Sugar, you can’t just say “you’re fired” to all your employees. An employee gains a right to a fair dismissal … Continue reading "Back to Basics: #2 Employees rights when being dismissed"