Contracts Posts

The surprise banks’ overdraft charges victory could leave landlords’ exposed to a new challenge by estate agents. The High Court originally ruled that millions of pounds of residential tenancy “renewal” fees charged by Foxtons to landlords were unfair resulting in expected refunds running to millions of pounds. The new interpretation of the law means that buy-to-let investors may now face delays in their claims for a rebate whilst any appeal is heard. Please get in touc.... (read more...)

Unfortunately business owners are often so keen to secure a sale or start working on a big project that they fail to get all the paperwork in place. Disputes in business can happen for many reasons, but so often they blow up because those involved have a different opinion on what was agreed. You know the situation – you’ve had some work done or purchased a piece of equipment and you’re not happy with what you’ve received. You scrabble around for the paperwork but there i.... (read more...)

I am sure that all buyers (and most sellers) will want to make sure that goods sold are of satisfactory quality and do the job intended. But what is the remedy when things go wrong, for example the steel supplied is not up to the job, the cattle food makes the cattle ill, the computer does not live up to its billing, or the machinery keeps breaking down? Sale of goods law provides remedies for buyers where the goods are not of "satisfactory quality". A recent High Court case conf.... (read more...)

The Credit Crunch is inevitably contributing to a delay in payment to businesses, particularly vulnerable SMEs. Money owed to small businesses shot up by 40% from £18.6 billion in 2007, to £25.9 billion in 2008, according to Bacs. And who knows where the figure is at this time, no doubt substantailly higher. This attack on cash flow is probably the biggest single cause of company failure. For example Barclays state that more than 750 companies failed in the South East in 2008 due t.... (read more...)

In the past 2 weeks I have been the victim of large scale internet fraud on 2 credit cards, and so I have taken a keen interest in liability and in ways to protect against future fraud. I have been very careful to use only on line stores who encrypt customer details, but fraudsters have still managed to obtain my credit card details including security number, as well as my address, telephone number, date of birth. This can only be a result of sophisticated hacking, or criminal activity by an e.... (read more...)

The latest issue of the Cousins Business Law ezine with a feature article entitled 'Should you rely on a gentleman's agreement'  is generating lots of interest.  It is amazing how many business owners and managers fall foul of the fact they didn't have the details of a commercial deal in writing. The example we talked about in the ezine (of a multi-million pound property deal that went ahead based on a verbal agreement) may seem extreme, but you'd be surprised how often this happ.... (read more...)