‘The clothes do not make the man’ …

 

…tell that to a woman! About a month ago I took the children out shopping, for the usual extra pieces they tend to grow out of during the summer (a pair of trousers here, a shirt there, and so on). Next tends to be one of my favourite spots for this purpose as they tend to make decently sewn clothes that my children will put up with – as they are old enough not to like anything that their friends won’t approve of . While they were choosing their garments of preference I thought I should take a look at the women’s section, one never knows what they might find; …I did not like what I found!

There it was, hanging from the rack, my favourite signature L.K. Bennett dress (which I had paid for dearly in September), in, what appears to be, cheap material and an awkward shiny lining – pictures at the bottom of the page. I cannot describe the feeling of shock, it felt as though someone stuck their hand in my pocket and robbed me off my money. I contacted L.K. Bennett and enquired about this mishap. They knew about the dress but they had taken no action.

This brings me to the (by now, infamous) case of Karen Millen v Dunnes Stores (2007), where Mrs Justice Finlay Geoghegan of the High Court ruled in Karen Millen’s favour, after Dunnes were clearly and beyond any doubt guilty or purchasing three items of the KM stores (two shirts of blue and brown stripes each and a steel grey top), reproduced the patterns and the products as a whole using materials with an almost identical print.

The interconnections of the Law: It’s all hearsay!

 

A few days ago at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Mr Joseph Warren of Ballymun was convicted for conspiring with another to hijack a security van at a Tesco supemarket in Co. Kildare in 2007. You can read about it here. This was the second time he was put to trial.

The first time the jury was undecided and he was released on bail (for he could not be detained for a prolonged period of time while awaiting his re-trial – Bunreacht na hEireann and personal liberty, presumption of innocence and the beat goes on). What the article does not say is that during his first trial, Mr Williams, a reporter who followed Mr Warren’s footsteps, submitted his articles and notes on the accused as evidence, which evidence was joyfully accepted. This raises two points:

In Campus Oil we trust no more

Interim injunctions are a person’s worst nightmare; they pop out of nowhere, without previous warning and can turn one’s world up-side down within minutes. They are a tool of mass destruction and very hard to appreciate its full potential unless it has happened to you or your client. To make it worse, this monstrosity was allowed to run loose for decades, in the name of the well known Campus Oil principles.

American Cyanamid was decided in 1975 and it took eight years for it to sail across the Irish Sea. During that time exceptions to its principles had already started to emerge in England, one of which was the case of N.W.L. ltd v Woods (1979). It immediately became clear to the British that unless they tame that puppy, it would soon grow up to be a vicious breed. And it did.