In the madness of Company or in the Company of madness?

Edit: Find additional observations to the original article below – Updated 30/12/2012

Yesterday, just when I got the chance to make a joke as to whether we should consult the stars about any real change in Company law, Pillar B of the Companies Bill 2012 was released, along with an amended Pillar A and an explanatory memorandum. It was unsurprising, as the people involved in this project are known for their punctuality and I was admittedly beginning to feel a bit anxious.

When the soft copy was published last year everybody was very pleased with the new type of company that was made the epicentre, ie the Private Company Limited by Shares (CLS), which is an improved version of the current equivalent. Now that the remaining Parts are out, I am not sure everyone is still feeling the same way. We were promised a simplification, albeit a consolidation, of the law revolving around companies. After giving the Bill a first read – it is more or less 1,500 pages, including the memorandum- this is the picture shaped in my mind:

Intimate Partner Homicide: DPP v David Bourke

 

…or why I do not like Criminal law – it enrages me. In a month from now or so, the Court of Criminal Appeal is expected to hand down its judgement on the case of David Bourke. A lot has been written about this case the last five years, it seems as though a lot of people found this case the sort one can easily relate to, and eagerly picked a side. I personally believe it is easy stating an opinion about somebody else’s life, when we are not part of it. On the other hand, for anyone who has been through the ‘delayed separation process‘ (when one has realised or was informed that the relationship is over, but yet the marriage itself is still there), one should take into account that it is one of several stages and a person will go through a wave of emotions; it is not unlikely that they might pile up.

Grrrrrrr…eyhound!

Until Greyhound was taken over by the private sector (with the addition of a couple months to get everything in order) every Monday was ‘Nightmare Monday’; I came home to a pile of rubbish in my front garden that I had to manually remove, no matter if it was daylight or pitch dark, if it was sunny or freezing, if I had the strength to bend over twenty times, after a long day, to pick up what was in somebody else’s bin the whole week before.

That made me mumble a lot, I am sure that quite a few people reading this now will be holding their heads thinking ‘oh no’, knowing what I am going to write about already. I fought very hard not to bring this issue up, and I ultimately decided to remain silent in fear of defamation. After spending my entire evening cleaning up what I have been looking at for the past three days, defamation right now seems to be waving from a long, long distance.

There is a remedy to this problem;

Paul Begley: The Emperor’s old clothes smelled of garlic …

Edit 26/06/2013: The judgment of the CCA is finally online on Courts.ie. You can read it here. DPP v Murray (2012), as suggested below, was indeed thoroughly evaluated.

… and so the Power promised him new ones, the kind the world cannot see; the kind one will only wear confined, behind bars. Of course though, just like the tale, they did not let him know what they were made of, for it was inconvenient and it would require extensive discovery, tracing, cross-examination over cross-examination, and a very lengthy trial resulting in heavy costs.

Instead, they promised him new clothes if he could mitigate the damages on a side deal with the Revenue and provide full disclosure of any acts revolving around tax evasion and fraud. Little did he know that five years later the Power’s sibling would wake up one day with a mind of its own and impose on him the maximum sentence possible, turning all of his good faith and co-operation against him. That is unconscionable in its own; a judge does not need to be in a court of Chancery to remember fairness and equity, values that spring from common sense and the law of nature. If monkeys will share a banana, surely we can split a sentence.