The plight of English law is indeed dire, but a simple solution is ready to hand, says Dr Michael Arnheim
I hardly recognised my last article from Sir Geoffrey Bindman’s recent comment (‘Don’t blame the judges! Too quick to judge?’, NLJ, August 2020). My article flagged up three recent cases picked almost at random to illustrate the serious plight of English law (‘Don’t blame the judges!’, NLJ, 3 July 2020). Two of these cases are not even mentioned in Sir Geoffrey’s attempted attack on my article.
One of the cases not mentioned by Sir Geoffrey is Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 13, in which 126 victims of sexual assaults by the late Dr Gordon Bates lost their case in the UK Supreme court (UKSC) after winning at first instance and also in the Court of Appeal. They were suing Barclays Bank, on whose behalf Dr Bates performed medical examinations on prospective bank employees. Barclays was found vicariously liable in the High Court and Court of Appeal on the ground that Dr Bates had been acting almost
