Alex Verdan QC in the Supreme Court
Alex Verdan QC is appearing in the Supreme Court today in the case of Re B. The issues are whether a child of two years of age should be permanently removed from her parents and placed for adoption. In that regard, whether the child was likely to suffer significant harm within the meaning of s.31(2)(a) of the Children Act 1989, and whether her permanent removal was a proportionate response to any such risk that she did face.
Rachel Chisholm
Rachel Chisholm will be co-presenting a paper on intractable private law disputes at the 6th World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights in Sydney, Australia, in March. Rachel has been given a grant by the FLBA to attend the Congress.
Andrew Powell
Congratulations to Andrew Powell who has been awarded a 2013 Pegasus Scholarship. Andrew will be spending 3 months with a leading law firm in California specialising in surrogacy and reproductive law.
White Paper Conference
On Thursday 7th February 2013 Michael Sternberg QC MCI Arb. Chaired a national financial remedy day long conference entitled Family Law: Shaping New Cases into Highly Persuasive Advice for Clients at the Caledonian Club, Belgravia SW1, attended by 146 delegates and organised by The White Paper Conference Company.
Amongst the 6 Silks who addressed the conference was Jonathan Cohen QC who spoke on Needs, Sharing and Entitlement in Income and Capital Awards.
Irish Government inquiry finds ‘significant state involvement’ in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries
Maeve O’Rourke, who brought the Magdalene Laundries case to the UN Committee against Torture in 2011, had assisted the Justice for Magdalenes advocacy group in submitting 3,500 pages of evidence to the inquiry, including over 700 pages of testimony.
High Court approves consent order achieved following rabbinical arbitration
Marcus Scott-Manderson QC and Teertha Gupta QC represented the Mother and Henry Setright QC (leading Edward Deveruex) represented the Father in a landmark ruling handed down by the High Court last week. Mr Justice Baker acceded to the parents’ proposal to refer their family dispute to non-binding arbitration and subsequently endorsed the outcome of that process concerning both children and financial arrangements. A copy of the judgment can be found here