“(1) Any person duly admitted as a solicitor shall be an officer of the Senior Courts; (2) Subject to the provisions of this Act, the High Court, the Crown Court and the Court of Appeal respectively, or any division or judge of those courts, may exercise the same jurisdiction in respect of solicitors as any one of the superior courts of law or equity from which the Senior Courts were constituted might have exercised immediately before the passing of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873in respect of any solicitor, attorney or proctor admitted to practise there.” 47 A corporate body recognised under section 9of the 1985 Act may provide legal services entirely lawfully. But it does not, on that account, become an officer of the Court and thereby subject to the supervisory jurisdiction. Noticeably neither the 1985 Act nor the LSA 2007makes any provision for the exercise of the Court's jurisdiction in respect of solicitors to be extended to non-solicitors although section 14(4) of the LSA 2007does extend the contempt of court jurisdiction to those who offend against section 14(1). Recognised legal bodies may, of course, have members who are solicitors, in respect of whom the court will have jurisdiction; but that will not apply to a body such as MWP – a BVI company – itself.” “(1) Any person duly admitted as a solicitor shall be an officer of the Senior Courts; (2) Subject to the provisions of this Act, the High Court, the Crown Court and the Court of Appeal respectively, or any division or judge of those courts, may exercise the same jurisdiction in respect of solicitors as any one of the superior courts of law or equity from which the Senior Courts were constituted might have exercised immediately before the passing of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873in respect of any solicitor, attorney or proctor admitted to practise there.”
“A solicitor who fails to honour the terms of a professional undertaking is prima facie guilty of professional misconduct. Consequently the Council will require its implementation as a matter of conduct.” “A solicitor who fails to honour the terms of a professional undertaking is prima facie guilty of professional misconduct. Consequently the Council will require its implementation as a matter of conduct.”
“In consideration of your handing to me the sum of£4,000 , we hereby undertake to repay the said sum to you together with interest at 2 per cent per month”
“This court has from time immemorial exercised a summary jurisdiction over solicitors. They are officers of the court and are answerable to the court for anything that goes wrong in the execution of their office. Even if the solicitor has been guilty of no fault personally, but it is the fault of his clerk, he is accountable for it: see Myers v Elman[1940] AC 282 . This jurisdiction extends so far that if a solicitor gives an undertaking in his capacity as a solicitor the court may order him straightaway to perform his undertaking. It need not be an undertaking to the court. Nor need it be given in connection with legal proceedings. It may be a simple undertaking to pay money, provided always that it is given ‘in his capacity as a solicitor’: see United Mining & Finance Corporation Ltd v Becher[1910] 2 KB 296 , 307 by Hamilton J.”
“This was not the common case of an undertaking given to the court in which any default is akin to a contempt and naturally attracts the remedy of attachment and committal. The undertaking in question here was not given to the court. It was not even given in the course of litigation. There is clear authority, however, from the earliest days that a solicitor, being an officer of the court, is liable to attachment for a breach of an undertaking - even though the undertaking is not given to the court itself. But the first requirement of the exercise of that jurisdiction, as Lord Denning MR has pointed out, is that the undertaking in question must have been given by the solicitor in the course of his activities as a solicitor. It must be given by him professionally as a solicitor and not in his personal capacity. The reason for that is clear enough, because a remedy of this kind is intended primarily to discipline the officers of the court, to ensure the honesty of those officers. The court is thus concerned only with their activities as solicitors, and anything done by a solicitor in his private capacity is outside this jurisdiction.”
“On its face it is simply an undertaking to repay a debt which is being contracted by the solicitor in question. If a solicitor borrows money personally and incurs a personal obligation in that regard, his promise to pay the money is not a promise in his capacity as a solicitor, even though he sits in his office when he receives the money and even though he acknowledges the debt on his professionally headed notepaper. Another possible view of this particular case is that this was in truth the giving of a guarantee by a solicitor for a debt incurred by his client. But looking at it in that way it seems to me to make no difference. Here again one cannot describe this as an act done in the capacity of a solicitor merely because a client of the partnership was involved in the transaction. …”
“The essential requirement is that the undertaking should have been given by the solicitor in his capacity as a solicitor … since that is the element which attracts the supervisory jurisdiction of the court. The mere fact that the giver of the undertaking happens to be a solicitor is not enough. The undertaking must therefore be given as part of or in connection with a transaction or activity which is “solicitorial”…”
“It is part of the usual or normal course of the business of a solicitor to be in possession or receipt of funds of or for a client in the course of handling a substantial transaction for that client. On the other hand it is not part of the usual or normal business of a solicitor either to receive money or a promise from a client in order that without more they can give an undertaking to a third party, or to give guarantees for the debt incurred by a client.”
“[F]or a term to be implied, the following conditions (which may overlap) must be satisfied: (1) it must be reasonable and equitable; (2) it must be necessary to give business efficacy to the contract, so that no term will be implied if the contract is effective without it; (3) it must be so obvious that ‘it goes without saying’; (4) it must be capable of clear expression; (5) it must not contradict any express term of the contract.” 19. In Philips Electronique Grand Public SA v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd [1995] EMLR 472, 481, Sir Thomas Bingham MR set out Lord Simon's formulation, and described it as a summary which “distil[led] the essence of much learning on implied terms” but whose “simplicity could be almost misleading”
“The question of whether a term should be implied, and if so what, almost inevitably arises after a crisis has been reached in the performance of the contract. So the court comes to the task of implication with the benefit of hindsight, and it is tempting for the court then to fashion a term which will reflect the merits of the situation as they then appear. Tempting, but wrong. [He then quoted the observations of Scrutton LJ in Reigate , and continued] [I]t is not enough to show that had the parties foreseen the eventuality which in fact occurred they would have wished to make provision for it, unless it can also be shown either that there was only one contractual solution or that one of several possible solutions would without doubt have been preferred …” 20 Sir Thomas's approach in Philips was consistent with his reasoning, as Bingham LJ in the earlier case The APJ Priti[1987] 2 Lloyd's Rep 37 , 42, where he rejected the argument that a warranty, to the effect that the port declared was prospectively safe, could be implied into a voyage charter-party. His reasons for rejecting the implication were “because the omission of an express warranty may well have been deliberate, because such an implied term is not necessary for the business efficacy of the charter and because such an implied term would at best lie uneasily beside the express terms of the charter”.” … the law is raising an implication from the presumed intention of the parties with the object of giving the transaction such efficacy as both parties must have intended that at all events it should have”
"whether, having regard to the situation in which the relevant transaction occurred, as known to both parties, a reasonable man, in the position of the 'acquirer' of the property, would expect the 'owner' acting honestly and responsibly, if he claimed any title in the property, to take steps to make that claim known . . ."
“If a defendant is proved to have used confidential information, directly or indirectly obtained from the plaintiff, without the consent, express or implied, of the plaintiff, he will be guilty of an infringement of the plaintiff's rights.”
“As I understand it, the essence of this branch of the law, whatever the origin of it may be, is that a person who has obtained information in confidence is not allowed to use it as a spring-board for activities detrimental to the person who made the confidential communication, and spring-board it remains even when all the features have been published or can be ascertained by actual inspection by any member of the public.”
“1. First, where there is a negative stipulation, breach may be restrained by injunction, as a matter of course, to restrain future breaches. It applies only to prohibitory injunctions; and that is this case. “1. First, where there is a negative stipulation, breach may be restrained by injunction, as a matter of course, to restrain future breaches. It applies only to prohibitory injunctions; and that is this case. 2. Secondly, the balance of convenience test applies to applications for interim injunctions, except where there is a clear or uncontested breach of a covenant not to do a particular thing. In my judgment, that also applies here. 3. Third, where the granting of the injunction amounts in substance to a final determination at the interim stage, the court will take into account the strengths and weaknesses of the respective cases, and the likelihood of the claimant's eventual success at trial. I interpolate that is in effect something I have already done, in examining Mr Fallon's evidence. 4. Fourth, this is all subject to discretion, an injunction being an equitable remedy. Although, I emphasise the basic rule that an injunction in the circumstances described will be normally granted as a matter of course. But injunctive relief may be refused if it is oppressive to the defendant or cause him particular hardship, although it would not be oppressive merely because burdensome or little prejudice to the claimant.”