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The origins of this litigation lay in the over‐selling of personal pensions that took place after April 1988. On 25th October, 1994, the Securities and Investments Board (SIB) published a long‐awaited statement, which it described as ‘guidance’. This statement was adopted on 5th November, 1994, by the Insurance Brokers Registration Council (IBRC), a recognised self‐regulating organisation (SRO) for the purposes of the Financial Services Act 1986.

Mr Barrett was authorised to carry on investment business under the trading name of Beechcroft by virtue of his membership of FIMBRA. In March 1986 Mr Taylor, the Applicant in this case, inherited £5,500 which he wished to invest with Beechcroft. In April 1986, on Mr Barrett's advice the Applicant handed Mr Barrett a cheque for £5,500 which Mr Barrett undertook to invest in such a way so as to yield 9.5 per cent pa for a fixed term of five years, with interest capable of being withdrawn as and when it accrued. The Applicant's mother then gave Mr Barrett a total of £11,000 to invest on the same terms. She died in 1989 leaving the Applicant as her sole heir.

The Committee has considered the present state of English civil law in relation to remedies available to victims of money laundering. We summarise here the relevant rules and principles of English law. See ‘Summary of the current legal position’ below.

This was an appeal from an earlier decision of the Queens Bench Divisional Court in R v Investors Compensation Scheme ex parte Gerald Taylor (judgment date 29th November, 1996) which has already been considered in this journal (see ‘Timing was crucial for ICS claim’, Vol. 5(2), Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance 1997 at p. 178).

Serious fraud trials are the sum of their component parts such that examination of one particular area often repays attention. The Roskill Fraud Trials Committee's criticisms were the backdrop for the Criminal Justice Act 1987 and the enhanced investigatory powers that are to be found in s. 2 thereof. Seven years after the enactment of the 1987 Act it is apposite to examine whether in derogating from the confines of traditional criminal evidential practices a certain level of procedural and substantive fairness has been maintained. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and its application to the rights of a suspect are also of importance. A critical examination of the above issues demands steering a careful course between normative rules and theory: in this area above all others it is impossible and undesirable to divorce one from the other.

Serious fraud trials are the sum of their component parts such that examination of one particular area often repays attention. The Roskill Fraud Trials Committee's criticisms were the backdrop for the Criminal Justice Act 1987 and the enhanced investigatory powers that are to be found in s. 2 thereof. Seven years after the enactment of the 1987 Act it is apposite to examine whether in derogating from the confines of traditional criminal evidential practices a certain level of procedural and substantive fairness has been maintained. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and its application to the rights of a suspect are also of importance. A critical examination of the above issues demands steering a careful course between prescriptive rules and theory: in this area above all others it is impossible and undesirable to divorce one from the other.

Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 abrogates the right to silence since a suspect is required to answer questions in pre‐trial investigations by the SFO, although the answers are inadmissible as evidence unless proceedings are brought under s. 2(14) for giving false information or by s. 2(8), where the individual ‘makes a statement inconsistent with it’. In a previous article, the writer has considered the necessity and effectiveness of s. 2 powers. It is also instructive to analyse the conceptual basis of s. 2 powers since this will aid in the interpretation of statutory ambiguities and will allow the courts to have a uniformity of approach when seeking to resolve the statutory ambiguities. The conceptual basis is also important as concerns the resolution of where the line lies between the effective investigation of offences pursuant to s. 2 and the rights of the individual subject to such questioning. A critical examination of the above issues demands steering a careful course between normative rules and theory: in this area above all others it is impossible and undesirable to divorce one from the other.

This article continues to assess the role of private nuisance as a common law tool for environmental protection, independent of the wider regulatory controls. It evaluates the decision in Cambridge Water and asks the question whether it would stand as good law before the Supreme Court. It concludes with illustrating the enduring role of the injunction in environmental protection and its capacity to coerce restorative environmental justice. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper is predominately a classic doctrinal article as it is principally library-based analysing both primary sources (that both pre- and post-date the modern law reporting system) and secondary sources whilst engaging in leading academic commentary.

Nuisance developed to a point in the nineteenth-century where a simple form of the tort was visible. At that juncture, it had an “unchanged” essence that emanated from a strict liability reciprocal identity. Recent judicial activity has visibly adulterated that identity: this article casts doubts on juridical restrictions that assess the conduct of defendants to assess liability. It is suggested that it may not withstand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court if, and when, they are tested. In light of that analysis and considering the potency of injunctions, it is argued that nuisance law potentially has a positive future in environmental protection.

Owing to the elected research approach, the scope of the article has been necessarily concentrated on succinct areas of a broader subject and viewed in a manner that works alongside the regulatory regime.

This paper recognises that nuisance law has a positive future in environmental protection especially if the courts are willing to embrace the historical paradigm which has served the common law in this field broadly well for hundreds of years.

This case involved foreign exchange transactions conducted by the First Defendants, a firm of commodities traders then trading as LHW Futures Ltd (LHW), on behalf of the Plaintiff who was an individual investing his own money in a private capacity. The Second Defendant, Mr Morris, was at all material times a senior account executive with LHW and dealt with the Plaintiff in relation to the transactions at issue. The events giving rise to this action occurred in the years 1984–85. The trading contract between LHW and a client would involve the client paying over a sum which would represent commission and margin on the particular currency trade. The commission, at 2 per cent of the total contract value, was high in comparison to other traders because it was a feature of these contracts that there would be no further margin calls to the client since an automatic stop loss mechanism was built in to the contract which had the effect that a client's total loss was limited to the amount of the original margin. In theory a client's profit on a currency contract was unlimited but in practice merely to break even and cover commission required a substantial rise in the price of the currency bought whereas a relatively small drop in its price would wipe out the client's position once and for all regardless of any subsequent rises. One defence expert testified that the likely effect of this form of currency trading contract was that approximately 90 per cent of investors would be wiped out while only 10 per cent profited. The Plaintiff in this action was an engineer and property developer with most of his assets tied up in a land bank and housing development. He was inexperienced in stock trading and commodities markets. In July 1985 the Plaintiff entered into two trades in Swiss Francs with LHW. He invested £2,600 in the first trade and £23,400 in the second. The Plaintiff was then passed on within LHW to Mr Morris, the Second Defendant, who dealt with ‘bigger clients’. On 30th July, 1985, Morris urged the Plaintiff to invest in one hundred lots of sterling at a total cost to him of £150,000. The Plaintiff bought ten lots of sterling at a cost of £15,000 paying £10,000 in cash and raising the balance by stripping it out of the earlier Swiss Franc deal. The price of sterling went against the Plaintiff and, as the stop loss position was about to be reached Mr Morris rang the Plaintiff to recommend he buy another ten lots of sterling at £15,000 to average out his position. Mr Morris was aware that the Plaintiff did not have the cash available and that he would have to borrow the necessary cash, as indeed he did. On 1st August the Plaintiff entered into the fourth trade at issue in this case. The stop loss position was reached on that trade too and the Plaintiffs position was wiped out. On 5th August the Plaintiff's trading position was closed and of his total stake of around £54,000 he recovered only £2,231.62.