Environmental Offences in UK Law

The area where a person may indulge in the conduct prohibited by section 4A with impunity are, accordingly, narrowly confined. Such areas are confined to a structure or part of a structure which is occupied as a person's home or other living accommodation. There is no exception in relation to the areas where such an offence may be committed in relation to mere accommodation. The concept of other living accommodation takes its meaning from association with the concept of a person's home.

I take it to be a general principle of law not requiring authority that where a person under an obligation to do a particular act has to do it on or before a particular date he has the whole of that day to perform his duty. No doubt as the hours pass it becomes less and less probable that he will be able to do it. The question is not when the charterer would cease to be likely to pay in time but when, to quote clause 5, "punctual payment" would have failed.

Irrevocable letters of credit and bank guarantees given in circumstances such that they are the equivalent of an irrevocable letter of credit have been said to be the life blood of commerce. Thrombosis will occur if, unless fraud is involved, the Courts intervene and thereby disturb the mercantile practice of treating rights thereunder as being the equivalent of cash in hand.

Justice and convenience in this context is not an abstract conception. It predicates that there is a cause of action in respect of which the court may make an order and the court will be unable to enforce its order unless there is security provided by a Mareva injunction. Therefore we asked Mr. Kealey what the cause of action was that we were being asked to support.

Mr. Megarry contended that the mere intensity of user or occupation could never be relevant. As a general proposition, I am not prepared to accept that argument; nor indeed is it necessary to do so. Mere intensity of user may (as it seems to me; but I must not be taken as deciding this point) affect a definable character of the land and of its use - or one of them.

The charterer remains entitled to continue to complete the discharge of the cargo, while remaining liable in damages for the loss sustained by the shipowner during the period for which he is being wrongfully deprived of the opportunity of making profitable use of his ship.