232: The Most Significant Cases of 2025

As the year draws to a close and the festive lights start to twinkle, we're unwrapping some of the biggest and most fascinating cases of 2025. A bumper year for public law, human rights, and a few surprises from the tech world too. Joining us for this end of year roundup are my co presenter Lucy McCann, and public law specialist from Chambers Jonathan Metzer.

In this episode, we'll be going through some of the headline making decisions of the year from court challenges over sanctions involving Israel to debates about hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. And a case that's had artists, photographers, and coders talking alike, artificial intelligence and the copyright of images. So pour yourself something warm, settle in by the tree or the desk, and join us for a reflective look at the cases that shaped twenty twenty five.

Shall we start with an area which has been pretty constantly in the news? Jonathan The Israel Gaza Conflict

The case is called IA and Others, and it was an appeal by the Secretary of State to the Court of Appeal. And the big issues in this case were about the extent to which the protections for family life should apply to allow a Palestinian family of six resident in Gaza to enter the United Kingdom to join their sponsor. The family was a father, a mother and four children aged eighteen seventeen, eight and seven, back in September twenty twenty four.

And they were seeking to join the brother of the father, so the paternal uncle, who had left Gaza back in two thousand seven and is now a British citizen. At the time of the hearing when it came before the first tier tribunal, the family in Gaza were living in the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone, but subsequent to that

They had to move to the Nusarat refugee camp. They were living in an unsustainable summer tent which had been damaged by gunfire, and in a nutshell the Court of Appeals said that their position remains extremely dangerous. and they are also a family which has an anti-Hamas profile, which of course is highly relevant to their safety in the Gaza Strip.

The sponsor, the Palestinian British citizen who wanted to bring them over to the UK, was employed by a media organisation but also suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, which has been triggered by the risks to his family, and he has an income and he's committed to accommodating and supporting the family beyond the short term in the UK.

Before he'd left Gaza in two thousand seven he'd been close to his brother and his brother's wife, and with the elder two children, the other two had not yet been born. In January of twenty twenty four, the family applied for entry clearance to the UK. And this element was the bit that got a lot of news coverage because the family used the Ukraine Family Scheme application form, which was the scheme that was used to bring over refugees from Ukraine who are the victims of the Russian invasion and

The representations that the family made acknowledged that this wasn't the right form. They didn't pretend that they qualified under the scheme, but they used the form because the guidance said you use the form which is closest to your circumstances. And here I think we see what is really at the core of this, because ultimately this claim had to be brought with reference to family life under Article eight, because the protections for asylum seekers

from being returned to a place where they may be in danger. You're only protected if you're in the UK. Unless the UK creates a safe route, as it did in the Ukraine scheme. you can't apply for refuge from out of country. That was why they had to apply using Article 8. And they accepted that they couldn't meet the immigration rules. And so their applications were refused, and their appeals were dismissed by the first tier tribunal.

And so the family's applications for entry clients were refused and they brought an appeal. The first tier tribunal dismissed the appeal, but the upper tribunal allowed the appeals, with reference to the right of family life. And so the Secretary of State then appealed. It so happens that for the actual case, the Secretary of State has agreed that the family can come to the UK, but it was considered by the government important to fight the case.

because it's a case which involves looking at exactly what the law around the right to family life provides. And it's an important decision. It's a decision in which the government made good its case and Ultimately, the court has tightened up and clarified the meaning of Article eight for the context of family members outside the nuclear family of parents and children under the age of eighteen.

And what the court said after having a long look in detail at the authorities both from Strasbourg and the domestic authorities was that normally the protections for family life are limited to the core family. But that you can have family life within Article 8 between parents and adult children or between adult siblings if there is an additional element of dependence involving more than normal emotional ties. And the main case on that was a decision called Kumari in the Strasbourg Court.

And the Court of Appeal said that the upper tribunal had applied a slightly different approach based upon a case in domestic law called Gagatha. Where Lord Justice Sedley had explained that this need for dependency should be read down to an irreducible minimum of real committed or effective support.

But the Court of Appeals said that wasn't right, because real support might actually only be a very low hurdle indeed in some cases. They didn't quite say that it was wrong to say what Lord Justice Sedley said. But they said that it isn't the test. The real test that needs to be applied is is their dependency. And that dependency is more than just the existence of support.

And it was found on the fact that there wasn't the necessary dependency because the family had not seen one another for some seventeen years. They were not in really frequent contact until the war began at the end of twenty twenty three. Since then, they have been in contact regularly and the sponsor has become very concerned about his brother. sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

And he does intend to support them in the UK and he has been providing them with financial support by sending money to Gaza. But this was held not to be enough. to establish the additional element of dependency so as to establish the existence of family life. And so it was found therefore that there was no family life within the compass of Article eight.

The other major aspect of this case was that the Court of Appeal went on to say that even if there had been family life between the family, the balance would still have been determined in favour of the government's position, because the upper tribunal didn't pay enough regard to the weight that needed to be given to the public interest as determined by the immigration rules as set by the government. What it said is that this is a question of respect for the UK's laws and democratic process.

And the decision as to what is necessary in UK society to protect the economic well being of the UK and the rights of citizens of the UK is the business of the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the Government.

and it was held that that factor, i. e. the fact that the family couldn't meet the requirements of the immigration rules to enter the UK, Wasn't given enough weight by the upper tribunal, and therefore even if the facts had been found to establish family life, It wouldn't have been a disproportionate interference in that family life for the government's case to be upheld and for the family not to be permitted to enter.

There's another aspect of the case which I think is interesting. It represents, I think, a tightening of the relevant principles. I think it clarifies and tightens the circumstance in which family life will exist.

the court did this with reference to a Strasbourg authority over a domestic authority. So it's slightly counterintuitive, I think, for the arguments that Strasbourg is all about expanding rights and that our domestic courts would be in a position where they would otherwise wish to tighten them because in this particular case it was the Strasbourg case of Kumari that was said to represent the correct legal test.

And it was the domestic decision in Kagathas that was said to be perhaps widening things a bit more than they should be. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's a general rule one way or the other, but I think it does show an interesting nuance in terms of how these cases end up making their way into how they're applied.

The Export Control Act two thousand and two governs the export of arms and other military equipment. And in relation to that act, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade issued guidance about principles to be followed when exercising licensing powers under that act. relevant to this judicial review are kind of two criterion in that guidance.

Firstly, that there needs to be respect for the UK's international obligations and relevant commitments, in particular sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council.

And where a license is inconsistent with those obligations, then those licensing powers shouldn't be exercised. The second criterion in that guidance sets out that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the country of final destination, as well as respect by that country for international humanitarian law, is a relevant consideration as well.

So in December twenty twenty three, so going back some time, Al Haq challenged the Secretary of State for continuing to grant export licenses to Israel for the supply of military equipment. On the second of september twenty twenty four, so almost a year later, the Secretary of State decided to suspend licenses authorising the export of items which might be used for carrying out or facilitating Israeli military operations in Gaza.

This was based on the Foreign Secretary at the time's assessment that Israel was not committed to complying with international humanitarian law, and that there was a clearist that authorising the export of items might mean that those items are used in carrying out or facilitating military operations by the IDF. So Secretary of State suspends licenses, however the supply of F thirty five components is spared from this decision.

And it's essentially decided that if those specific licenses were suspended, this would mean there would be a significant disruption to the entire F thirty five programme. and the government essentially say this would have a critical impact on international peace and security and would undermine NATO. So The proceedings are amended by Al Hack just to focus on what is called the F thirty five carve out.

In June of this year, the divisional court refused permission to apply for judicial review on every ground. And of significance, the divisional court found that when reaching that decision to exclude F thirty five exports. The UK government didn't apply the criterion that I spoke about at the beginning in deciding whether or not to continue exporting those F thirty-five parts.

Instead, the government treated this decision as an exception to its policy rather than a decision within that normal policy framework.

So in other words, even though that guidance contains criteria reflecting international law and humanitarian norms, the government's decision described this as a carve out to that policy. That matters because the government didn't apply that policy as part of its reasoning and therefore there wasn't a kind of domestic policy foothold on which the court could interpret international law obligations through the guidance.

The case then went to the Court of Appeal, and the Court of Appeal essentially upheld the divisional court's finding of fact. that the F thirty five out was a decision of the executive out with that policy guidance. This essentially meant that all of the international humanitarian law considerations weren't relevant and importantly the divisional court found that those weren't justiciable. So Even though interestingly I think Al Hack brought this JR to consider big concepts like

Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law, arms trade treaties, genocide risk, and so on. Actually, the decision of the divisional court that was upheld by the Court of Appeal turned on quite a basic finding of fact. And therefore closed off.

a kind of bigger discussion about some of those bigger and more controversial issues. It's an interesting case. It kind of touches on what John was saying about the gaza family cases in that it kind of reminds you of the limits of judicial review and also is a kind of win for the executive again and it's a win for the executive on the nature of their decision making as well

it's brought on big sort of convention grounds of Article ten and Article eleven and also a challenge based on a failure to take account of relevant factors we're making the decision to prescribe. So a meaty challenge and it is something obviously that's been at the forefront of the news because of all of the protest action in relation to what's going on in Gaza and so I'm sure will be closely followed by our And the general public

around the intelligence assessments that the government may or may not have relied on. I don't know, but I think it's conceivable that there will be things which only those in the closed case will have known about as being potentially relevant to the outcome.

I'm not sure which way it will go. I would emphasise that in this very fraught climate, that there is a real concern in the Jewish community, and I'm in the Jewish community, there is a real concern about safety. And of course we've seen recent events.

Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r amser the level of security that's needed even to go to the synagogue on a Jewish holiday and what we've seen happens when there isn't that high level of security on Yom Kippur.

worrying concerns from the Jewish community about safety. And of course, on the other hand, people are very concerned about their right to assemble and protest about genocide and we've seen kind of horrendous examples in the news of arrest and treatment of peaceful protesters under the guise of

this prescription, some of which may well be legitimate, but I'm sure some of which won't be legitimate. So it it really is one of those cases where there's very strong feelings on both sides and it's not simply a case of

the kind of government and the executive on one side and a kind of marginalized or disenfranchised community on the other, it it really does affect quite fundamental rights and freedoms and security on both. So Yeah, f for that reason again, I'm sure it will be very closely followed by lots of people.

ond byddai'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw. The hotel was used for a few years and acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd acelodd The owner agreed to provide asylum accommodation again after a process in which an application for change of use was made and then withdrawn in a context of delay.

And the owner had been advised by the Home Office that they didn't need to seek planning permission when they moved to this change of use again in twenty twenty five. Since April twenty twenty five, three arrests were made in respect of individuals accommodated at the hotel, and that has led to substantial public concern and public anger, and there were protests outside the hotel.

But the local authority didn't do anything major until in August it applied for an injunction to restrain the owner from using the hotel on the basis that it amounted to a material change of use. So what we have here is a highly charged political question over the top of a matter of black letter planning law. And the High Court granted an interim injunction pending trial

to say that the hotel couldn't be used for this purpose. And importantly also the High Court dismissed the government's application to be joined as a party to the proceedings. The Court of Appeal was not at all impressed. by this decision. It first held that the High Court had erred in not giving intervener status to the Secretary of State.

Secretary of State has a statutory duty to accommodate asylum seekers, and the judgment granting the interim injunction had potentially important consequences for the government. And also because the government was in a position to provide potentially useful evidence for the issues that had to be decided, and so it was said to be wrong not to have given the Secretary of State intervening status.

Then it was held that the approach that the High Court took to the question of the balance of convenience, which is the core test, when deciding whether to grant an interim injunction pending trial, had been seriously flawed.

First of all, the Court of Appeal was critical of the findings by the High Court that the operator had been acting deliberately in terms of the approach it had taken. I think in broad terms The Court of Appeal was saying that the High Court took a sort of unduly tough approach to the approach that the operator had taken. There were then two elements of the High Court judgment the Court of Appeal described as being very worrying, because the High Court had given limited weight, but some weight.

To the counsel's argument that if an interim injunction was refused and then subsequently the case was upheld at trial, the amenity of local residents would have been affected by protests. which had subsequently been proven to be protests against an unlawful use. I know that's a complicated sentence. And the other aspect that was found to be worrying was that markedly limited weight, but some weight.

was given to the consequences of unlawful activity in which persons hostile to the current activity at the Bell had engaged in. And the Court of Appeals said that giving even some weight to the Would mean that if there was an outbreak of protests, you would be enhancing the case for a planning injunction, and that it would therefore run the risk of acting as an impetus or an incentive for further protest.

some of which may be disorderly around asylum accommodation, and at worst it could run the risk of even encouraging lawlessness. So the Court of Appeal was very critical of giving any weight at all to those factors. And the Court of Appeal also found that there was force in the argument that the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers was a national issue that required a structured response. It was argued that

If you uphold the interim injunction, the problem doesn't go away. It will just mean that the asylum seekers will need to be housed somewhere else. the capacity will have to be found somewhere else in the system. And so ultimately this isn't an approach which is readily dealt with on a piecemeal case by case basis. And it was found that there was force in the argument that it needed a national response. And it was noted in passing that perhaps

if the Secretary of State had been allowed to intervene, then the judge may have appreciated that as slightly passive aggressive, although I have to say I think very well founded points the Court of Appeal made there. And then finally, the Court of Appeal was critical of the Council's approach. it found that the council had delayed in bringing its case and that that should have been found to be more important than it had been in terms of whether an injunction should be granted.

Because the council was aware from February that the hotel was being used to house asylum seekers, and the operator then written to them in May reaffirming that. The council didn't then make the application until August. And it made that application by serving sixteen hundred pages of supporting material supported by legal argument.

on an employee of the operator with three working days notice for a hearing for which four hours have been allocated. I have to say, I think all the lawyers in this podcast will agree this is every lawyer's worst nightmare. One can only imagine what it was like For everyone at the operator trying to tackle this. And the Court of Appeal was understandably very critical of that. They said that.

Given that the decision to proceed with this application had been made almost a week earlier, the counsel should have sent them a letter before claim to have foreground what their case was going to be and put them on notice.

rather than simply serving on them a full application with only a few days to repair with a very large amount of material. And overall It was found that it was right to take into account the Epping resident's fear of crime as being a factor one of limited weight in terms of granting the injunction, but it was outweighed by several factors. The undesirability of incentivizing protest?

the desirability of preserving the status quo for the relatively brief period leading up to the forthcoming trial, and by the range of public interest factors. which had been considered in terms of the need for a national response rather than a piecemeal response to what I think it's fair to say is a national issue that needs to be dealt with.

Following on from that, the High Court then decided in November not to grant a final injunction. It was found not to be a commensurate response to the claimed breach of planning control. and the continuing need for hotels as an important element of the supply of contingency accommodation was a significant counterbalancing factor. And so I think the takeaway points from this case is that the courts here have taken very seriously the difficult challenge the government has.

in accommodating asylum seekers to whom statutory duties are owed. And it took it seriously both in terms of procedural points. So it the Court of Appeals said that if you get a case like this, the Secretary of State should have the right to intervene in the case and make its arguments and provide its evidence.

and in respect of substantial points, so it's a factor of important weight that there are public interest factors around how the government goes about its task of providing accommodation in accordance with its duties.

to solve this problem is. But importantly it's not really a question for the courts to turn their mind to it. It's a question for the government. And it's one that I don't envy them having to try and figure out what is apparent, I think, from the Weathersfield litigation. and also the Epping Hotel litigation is that essentially you can't just magic away this problem. It has to be dealt with. somehow, asylum seekers have to be safely accommodated in the UK, according to our domestic

legal obligations. So I don't think this is the end of this at all. And I think, you know, when I think back to our roundup episode last year, where we talked about the Rwanda litigation, it seems like every year the courts are for want of a better word, kind of plagued with having to deal with litigation surrounding incredibly contentious decisions. And every time it does so it essentially throws up age old questions about whether or not the convention is fit for purpose.

versus the wider public interest as interpreted by the democratically elected government. And these cases are difficult and I don't really believe in a one size fits all approach. I think sometimes the right answer is one way and sometimes the other and it's very fact sensitive. But I totally agree with you, Lucy. I think these cases are taxing questions about exactly where is the right balance. How far should the courts go in?

upholding one interest over the other. And I completely agree. I hope we'll be back here in twelve months discussing these issues again further. And I would say if you're a law student considering where to go, you will have a fascinating time if you move into public law.

Topic which is preoccupying everybody at the moment, even non techie people, the subject of artificial intelligence. There's been a big case of About copyright and copyright images and the way artificial intelligence training is scraping copyrighted images off the internet. Lucy, tell us about the case of Getty.

of UK IP law and how this squares with generative AI. And this involved the decision of Mrs. Justice Joanna Smith in November of this year. In this case, the claimants, getty images with several related companies under the Getty Images brand and these entities collectively own or have exclusive licenses over millions of high quality photographic and artistic images. and these are referred to as visual assets or copyright work. They brought a claim against stability AI.

which is a UK based company that developed the stable diffusion AI model, which is a deep learning image generation tool that creates images based on text or image prompts. Its work and its model was trained on around twelve point three million visual assets, together with associated captions from Getty Images websites, as well as publicly accessible third party websites. So a lot of information.

In the claim, Getty Images sued stability AI alleging intellectual property infringements under various heads, including copyright infringement, secondary copyright infringement, trademark infringement and passing on. Getty also claimed that the model's training involved scraping millions of its copyrighted images without permission, so quite a meaty claim.

In summary, the High Court largely rejected the claim that the AI model itself was a copyright infringer merely because it was trained on all of these copyrighted work. I'd really recommend reading Roslyn's article on the UK Human Rights blog for the technical detail essentially on this case. In that article, Rosalind flags commentary that essentially following this ruling, attention is likely going to turn to the government. and its consultation on copyright and generative AI.

as it faces pressure from the creative industries who oppose essentially data mining like this. So even though this was a win for generative AI and I'm sure for all of the software developers who work in this field, it still doesn't solve the problem that I think lots of creatives are really concerned about, which is how their content and their data i is being used to train models.

And shortly before the two of them had gone to Bexley Heath Police Station in South East London. and the boyfriend had been arrested and bailed for alleged theft of a car belonging to a local criminal called Paul Asprey, and the attack on them had been orchestrated by Paul Aspury, and he was convicted at trial of murder and attempted murder, and the gunmen were never identified.

But the focus here was around the role of the police, because the coroner, a very experienced coroner, made rulings which included that the evidence was insufficient. for a properly directed jury to find that the police were or ought to have been aware of any immediate risk to Sabina Rizvey's life from Paul Asbury, and that there was insufficient evidence.

to support any suggestion that there were any steps that they could reasonably be expected to have taken to prevent any risk to her from materializing. The main part of this case is that the High Court held that the judicial review had been brought too late.

it was brought several months after the long stop deadline to bring a claim and in any event claims are supposed to be brought promptly and it was held to be out of time. But furthermore, the High Court found that it didn't have merit. It was held in essence, that the coroner had been right to conclude that causation had to be approached by reference to acts or omissions alleged to be causative, and that the coroner had been right.

that there wasn't sufficient evidence to leave those issues to the jury, and that essentially the case that was being articulated was a very detailed attempt to disagree with the current And that wouldn't be enough to make good a case in judicial review. So it's a useful clarification of the relevant principles that when deciding whether Article II, the Right to Life, is engaged at an inquest,

an arguable breach needs to be shown. But then at the end of the evidence, when the coroner's deciding what issues to leave for the jury, there has to be sufficient evidence to support a relevant finding under the the famous Galbraith Plus test, which is applied by the court.

She'd been in a relationship that was characterized by years of domestic abuse and coercive control. And following the inquest in September to October of this year, Dr. Shirley Radcliffe, the coroner in the East London Coroner's Court concluded that her death resulted from domestic abuse by her partner and that she was unlawfully killed. Obviously lots of coronial decisions aren't reported, but from experience this seems like a reasonably rare

conclusion. There aren't many decisions where a coroner has returned an unlawful killing conclusion in the context of suicide following domestic abuse. And I think that quite significant, even more so because a criminal conviction has never been secured against Georgia Barta's former partner.

So we're coming to the end of this quite detailed roundup of cases of twenty twenty five. Let's talk about what's not happening. And I'm thinking of the collapsed China spy case. Who'd like to take this up? John.

I wonder if they'll end up being more about this in terms of exactly where the decision was taken and and really why it was taken. But certainly I think this is another example that shows how the law often involves the application of whatever society is worried about and espionage is a pressing point and so it makes itself felt in this case in aborted criminal proceedings.

circumvented. So I can see why it's presenting some difficulties, but it's no doubt a source of great frustration for those who've been consulted on it, who want to see some kind of clarity in this area. By contrast, The Employment Rights Bill this week has passed through all parliamentary stages, so it looks like the Employment Rights Bill is going to

be enacted. This is something that we've covered a lot on Law Pods, so I don't think we need to go into it in any detail, but I would really recommend our listeners listen to the episode where Alistair Henson Rosalind and Henry Tufnell discuss the employment rights bill and also a shameless plug from me, my recent episode on clause twenty two A and the implications that the new employment rights bill is going to have on

NDAs. So we've covered that on LawPod. Also, we'll be covering another important area, cases to do with transgender rights. So we will have an update in the new year on the For Women Scotland case and essentially the implications that that case is having in other areas. I'm sure our listeners will be aware of the Sandy Peggy case. So that's going to be covered in the new year by an update episode as well.

Other areas, clinical negligence, there's not been a huge amount to report this year really in terms of significant cases. So we haven't given that much attention in the roundup episode. Very briefly, John, I think the case of PMC. this year will be a relief to most clinical negligence practitioners, mostly because it just upholds the status quo.