CASE SUMMARIES

The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Education

R v Harrow London Borough Council, ex p M; QBD (Turner J) 8 Oct 1996.

A local education authority was not relieved of the necessity of complying fully with a statement of special educational needs where that non-compliance derived from the failure of an area health authority to provide the requisite therapy, since s 168(5) of the Education Act 1993 made it clear that the duty was owed personally to the child and was not delegable.

Tim Kerr (David Levene & Co) for the applicants; Timothy Straker QC (Harrow Legal Services) for the respondents.

Practice

Practice Direction (Interlocutory orders for injunctions); Practice Direction (Ex parte Mareva injunctions & Anton Piller orders); Lord Bingham of Cornhill LCJ, Sir Stephen Brown P, Sir Richard Scott V-C; 28 Oct 1996.

In relation to interlocutory orders for injunctions, standard forms of order have been agreed for use in both the Chancery and Queen's Bench Divisions. All such orders made in the Chancery motions court or the Queen's Bench judge in chambers should now follow these forms. Whenever possible a draft should be provided and a disk containing the draft should also be available, thus enabling incorporation of amendments by the judge and arrangements for immediate sealing and entry of the order.

In relation to ex parte Mareva injunctions and Anton Piller orders, standard forms attached to an earlier Practice Direction ([1994] 4 All ER 52; [1994] 1 WLR 1233) have been superseded by new forms.

Copies of both directions and the new forms annexed thereto can be obtained on disk by sending a newly formatted blank disk to Room TM 5.10, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2A 2LL.

Racism

Burton & anr v De Vere Hotels; EAT (Smith J, R Chapman, Lord Gladwin) 18 Sept 1996.

The hotel group, as the employer of two young Afro-Caribbean waitresses at the Pennine Hotel, Derby, was liable to compensate them for subjecting them to racial harassment, contrary to s 4 of the Race Relations Act 1970, after it allowed the "comedian" Bernard Manning, while entertaining 400 members and guests of the City of Derby Round Table at the hotel, to make racially offensive remarks to them and encourage their abuse by guests. The event was sufficiently under the employer's control that it could by good management have prevented or reduced the harassment.

Laura Cox QC, Karon Monaghan (Khurshid Drabu) for the employees; Alan Wilkie QC (David Edwards, Warrington) for the employer.

Tax

R v O'Kane and Clarke (HMITs), ex p Northern Bank Ltd; QBD (Ferris J) 21 Aug 1996.

Notices served by tax inspectors under s 20(3) of the Taxes Management Act 1970 requiring information about the affairs of a taxpayer could request the production of documents only, not of information not contained in documents. Although documents in such a notice could be described by reference to a class, the documents described in the class must be readily identifiable and not require the recipient of the notice to consider whether or not a document fell into it.

David Goldberg QC, John Walters (Cameron Markby Hewitt) for the bank; Genevra Caws QC, Rabinder Singh (Inland Revenue Solicitor) for the Crown.