TRANSCRIPTS
advocates and the courts are widening their rights of audience to include solicitors. One of the functions of solicitors is to brief barristers. In other words, they collect all the legal documents that are necessary to enable the barrister to present the best case to the court. Solicitors usually work in partnerships, whereas barristers are what is known as sole practitioners. They work on their own.
Most people consult a solicitor when they want to buy or sell a house, when they want to write a will to distribute their money and property after their death, or to resolve a family dispute. People also consult their solicitor if they want to arrange a business contract or if they are setting up their own company. Some solicitors specialize in criminal work and make themselves available to people who have been arrested. I’m sure you’ve watched numerous films and TV programmes where someone says: ‘I need a solicitor before I say another word.’
Unit 3, Lesson 2, Exercise B 1.11 Part 1
OK. Is everybody here? Right, let’s start. What I’m going to talk about today is civil and criminal courts within the English legal system. Civil courts resolve disputes between private citizens or between private citizens and the state. In the criminal courts, cases are brought against a person who has broken the law. These cases are usually brought by the state. It is important to know the distinction between the cases that are heard in the civil court and the cases that are heard in the criminal court. So, in this lecture we’re going to look at the differences and also where there is an overlap. We’ll then take a brief look at tribunals and establish how these differ from civil and criminal courts.
Unit 3, Lesson 2, Exercise C 1.12
Part 2 Let’s look at some examples to highlight the differences between the types of court. Firstly, trespass. Trespass is a tort, so the sign to deter unwanted visitors that you may have seen on a gate, ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’, isn’t correct. What’s wrong with it? Remember, you can only prosecute someone in a criminal court, and trespass is not a crime. It’s a tort. A trespasser would be sued in a civil court, and the court would normally order the defendant to pay damages. Or
in certain circumstances the court might issue a prohibitory injunction to prevent the trespasser from going onto the plaintiff’s land. If there was a breach of the injunction, the trespasser would be in contempt of court and the case would be heard in either the county courts or the High Court.
What about assault? Well, assault is both a crime and a tort. In a criminal case, assault is usually defined as any act which intentionally or possibly recklessly causes another person to apprehend immediate and unlawful personal violence. ‘Apprehend’ means to understand that something is very likely to happen. Battery, on the other hand, is usually defined as the intentional or reckless application of force on another person. If you deliberately bump into someone in a street, that would be actionable, but if the street was extremely crowded and you had no way of avoiding it, that would be part of acceptable social interaction and would probably not be actionable.
Theft is a crime and is defined in the Theft Act 1968 as ‘dishonestly appropriating the property of another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.’ Here is a situation which, sadly, some of you might have experienced. A student was on his first visit to the UK and was unfamiliar with the currency. He took a taxi and paid the driver what he thought was the correct sum of money. The driver indicated that he needed more and took notes from the student’s wallet that amounted to far more than the actual fare. The driver was convicted of theft and appealed on the grounds that the victim consented to the money being taken. The Appeal Court judges rejected this argument because the student only consented to the legal amount being taken.
Unit 3, Lesson 2, Exercise D 1.13 Part 3
Cases brought before the civil courts are to do with legal matters such as breach of contract, trespass to property, and disputes over land or the wrongful exercise of power by a public authority. Cases are usually cited with the names of the parties to the dispute: for example, Miller and Jackson. This is written Miller v Jackson, but said as ‘and’: Miller and Jackson.
In civil cases, the court can award damages to the person who has suffered as the result of wrongdoing. In certain circumstances, the court will issue an injunction to prevent the wrongdoing from occurring again.
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