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Cases Matthew Smith

Derby Teaching Hospitals v Derby CC & Charity Commission (2019)

Judgment Date: 12 Dec 2019

12 December 2019 wasn’t merely a momentous day for the nation politically, it also saw the High Court hand down judgment on one of the year’s most interesting charity cases.

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Members
Christopher McCall KC
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

(1) Michael Rittson-Thomas (2) Hugo Rittson-Thomas (3) Kim Hughes v Oxfordshire County Council (2019)

Judgment Date: 21 Feb 2019

A local authority which had sold land granted to it under the Schools Sites Act 1841 s.2 held the proceeds of sale on trust for the original grantor's descendants. Section 14, which prevented the statutory right of reverter, operated only where the land was continuing to be used for educational purposes within s.2: it did not a prevent a trust arising where the school had been closed and the site kept vacant pending its sale. A local authority's intention to use the proceeds of sale to meet part of the costs of constructing a new school did not amount to s.2 use for the purposes of education so as to engage s.14.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Private Client

Charity Commission for England and Wales v Cambridge Islamic College (2018)

Judgment Date: 26 Oct 2018

When determining whether a registered charity's name was "too like" another registered charity's name for the purposes of the Charities Act 2011 s.42(2)(a)(ii), the words "too like" were to be given their ordinary meaning; that was a broad and open-ended meaning rather than one that focused entirely on visual or aural similarity.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

(1) Michael Rittson-Thomas (2) Hugo Rittson-Thomas (3) Rupert Rittson-Thomas (4) Kim Hughes v Oxfordshire County Council (2018)

Judgment Date: 09 Mar 2018

The Schools Sites Act 1841 s.2 allowed land to be granted as a site for a school and to revert to the grantor when that use ceased, unless s.14 applied and the land was sold or exchanged for a more eligible site. Section 14 did not mean that in order to avoid the statutory reverter, the sale or exchange always had to be carried out before, or at the same time as, the school was moved to new premises.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities
Real Estate
Private Client

Burnden Holdings (UK) Ltd v Fielding & Anor (2018)

Judgment Date: 28 Feb 2018

The court construed the Limitation Act 1980 s.21(1)(b), which provided that no limitation period was applicable to actions by a beneficiary under a trust to recover trust property in the possession of the trustee or previously received by him and converted to his use. The mere fact that misappropriated trust property had remained legally and beneficially owned by corporate vehicles throughout the misappropriation, rather than becoming vested in law or equity in the defaulting directors, did not mean that s.21(1)(b) was inapplicable.

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Members
Christopher R Parker KC
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Company, Partnerships & LLPs
Insolvency & Restructuring
Private Client

Burnden Holdings (UK) Ltd (In Liquidation) v Fielding (2017)

Judgment Date: 28 Jul 2017

Summary judgment was not granted on an insolvent company's claim that its directors had caused its insolvency by dishonestly distributing the share capital of one of its subsidiaries where they had a real prospect of successfully defending the claim. Further, it was possible that the directors were entitled to claim relief under the Companies Act 2006 s.1157 as there was no invariable rule that relief should not be granted to the detriment of the creditors of an insolvent company.

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Members
Christopher R Parker KC
Matthew Smith

Bisrat v Kebede (2017)

Judgment Date: 26 Jun 2017

Reference to "the mother church" in a charity's trust deed giving control of a church building was to the Addis Ababa synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Although a rival Seattle synod had claimed subsequent revisions to the church's byelaws had led to their appointment as trustees instead, their adoption had not changed the meaning of the trust deed.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

R (On the Application of Sustainable Development Capital LLP) (Claimant) v Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy & ors (2017)

Judgment Date: 07 Apr 2017



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Members
Catherine Newman KC*
Matthew Smith

Burnden Holdings (UK) Ltd (In Liquidation) v Fielding (2016)

Judgment Date: 17 Jun 2016

A judge had erred in granting summary judgment to the directors of a company in liquidation in respect of a claim for breach of their fiduciary duty, on the basis that the claim was time-barred. No limitation period applied to the claim by reason of the Limitation Act 1980 s.21(1)(b) and, alternatively, the availability of a postponed limitation period, such that the proceedings had been started in time under s.32, could not be determined on an application for summary judgment.

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Members
Christopher R Parker KC
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Insolvency & Restructuring
Private Client

Excel RTI Solutions v Revenue & Customs Commissioners (2015)

Judgment Date: 21 Oct 2015

The standard of proof to be satisfied by Customs before deciding that a trader knew the transactions in which it was participating were connected with the fraudulent evasion of VAT was the civil standard of the balance of probabilities.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Baddeley & Ors v Sparrow, Carne, Websper & Charity Commission For England & Wales (2015)

Judgment Date: 30 Jul 2015

The First-tier Tribunal had erred when amending a Charity Commission scheme in respect of land held on trust so as to preserve the land as an open space, by treating the trusts as establishing the land as having a purpose rendered charitable by reason of the particular qualities of the land in question.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Ace Paper Ltd v Fry & Others (2015)

Judgment Date: 18 Jun 2015

In construing the terms of an agreement between the parties where the ordinary and natural meaning of the words used could not have been intended, the court held that the re-assignment to the appellant of a debt for which it had already received the full value from the respondent was counterintuitive and would require much clearer words than had been used in the agreement.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Charity Commission For Northern Ireland v Bangor Provident Trust & AG for Northern Ireland (2015)

Judgment Date: 24 Apr 2015

The objects clause of a trust set up for charitable purposes did not, by empowering the trust to do acts "conducive to" those purposes, mean that the trust could lawfully engage in purposes that were not wholly charitable.

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Members
Matthew Smith

In the Matter of KR Hardy Estates Ltd v Richard Hardy & Ors (2014)

Judgment Date: 10 Dec 2014

The value at which a minority shareholder's shares in a family-run company were to be bought out under an unfair prejudice petition was to be assessed as at the date of the court order. That date had the advantage of certainty and was the most fair out of several possible valuation dates.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Company, Partnerships & LLPs

Mountstar (PTC) Ltd v Charity Commission for England & Wales (2013)

Judgment Date: 17 Oct 2013

The Charity Commission for England and Wales had acted lawfully in deciding to open a statutory inquiry into a charity and in appointing an interim manager on the basis of concerns that the charity's sole trustee might be conflicted by virtue of the charity's involvement in a gift aid tax fundraising scheme in whose success one of the trustee's directors had a personal interest.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

Tallington Lakes Ltd & Neil Morgan v Ancasra International Boat Sales Ltd (2012)

Judgment Date: 21 Dec 2012

It was generally accepted practice that if a company could demonstrate that a debt on which a winding-up petition was founded was genuinely disputed on substantial grounds, the petition would be struck out. The extent to which the court should go to determine whether there was such a dispute was not intended to be lengthy or detailed; a long and elaborate hearing was neither practical nor appropriate and was likely to result in a wasteful duplication of court time.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) v Charity Commission For England & Wales (2012)

Judgment Date: 02 Nov 2012

A Roman Catholic charity failed to show that there were weighty and convincing reasons which justified a change to its memorandum of association to enable it to lawfully continue a discriminatory practice under the exemption in the Equality Act 2010 s.193 so that it could restrict its adoption services to heterosexual couples.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

In the Matter of Wedgwood Museum Trust Ltd (2012)

Judgment Date: 19 Jul 2012

Although administrators' costs were generally justified as the point upon which they sought directions required a definitive answer, their retention of leading counsel where two other leading counsel had been retained was clearly inappropriate. Accordingly, the administrators' costs of briefing leading counsel were disallowed.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

Helena Partnership Ltd v Revenue & Customs Commissioners & Attorney-General (2012)

Judgment Date: 09 May 2012

The provision of housing accommodation, otherwise than for those in some relevant charitable need, was not a charitable purpose within the spirit and intendment of the preamble to the Charitable Uses Act 1601, either directly or by analogy with any other recognised purpose. It followed that the objects of a housing association were not exclusively charitable and it was accordingly liable for corporation tax on the rents that it received.

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Members
Christopher McCall KC
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

Independent Schools Council v Charity Commission for England (2011)

Judgment Date: 02 Dec 2011

The court determined the appropriate form of relief to be granted following its finding that guidance issued by the Charity Commission regarding the public benefit requirement contained in the Charities Act 2006 s.2 and s.3 was wrong in law and obscure.

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Members
Matthew Smith

Practice areas
Charities

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