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Restrictions on land use appear in the title deeds of many properties – but the law permits their deletion or modification if they become obsolete over time or stand in the way of reasonable development. Exactly that happened in one case in which the Upper Tribunal (UT) opened the way for construction of three new homes in a large suburban garden despite neighbours' objections. The garden once formed a large field on the outskirts of a major city. Part of it was subject to a restrictive covenant, dated 1928, which...

Although commercial surrogacy businesses have long been banned in the UK, the Court of Appeal recently ruled that a clinical negligence victim would not be breaking the law were she to enter into such an arrangement in California, where a more liberal surrogacy regime prevails. The woman is unable to have children after she developed cervical cancer and had to undergo radical surgery. The NHS trust that was responsible for her treatment was ordered by a judge to pay her almost £600,000 in compensation after it admitted that four opportunities...

The legal dispute between Elon Musk and Vernon Unsworth, the man who helped to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand, may have dropped out of the press over the last few weeks, but a recent case shows the lack of accuracy of Mr Musk's assertion that Twitter was just the forum for a 'schoolyard spat' that would not be taken seriously by users who expect to read 'opinion, not facts'. The case involved a tweet made by the agent of a former chairman of UKIP in the run...

The supposition that residential properties are exempt from Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is a common, but incorrect, one. You would think, for example, that if a person only owns one property, sleeps there quite often, has post sent there and tells the council that it is their home, that would be sufficient evidence to ensure that the onward sale of the property would not give rise to a CGT liability. This view might be strengthened by the fact that it was clearly the owner's original intention to live in the...