GRi in Court 11-02-99

A DISPUTE between neighbours over a small strip of land worth £200 ended yesterday with a couple facing the prospect of selling their Cotswolds retirement home to pay a huge legal bill. The ruinous row over where the boundary lay lasted 18 years.

It was a disastrous end for George Powling, 80, and his wife Elizabeth, 76, when the Court of Appeal ruled for Douglas Woolls, 78. The ruling means that the couple must leave their five-bedroom house at Brimscombe, Gloucestershire.

Mrs Powling said: "It has been more than a nightmare -- if that is possible. We will definitely have to sell the house To pay the court costs. It is all over a tiny piece of land which was only worth £200 when we first had trouble. It is crazy, I can tell you. Our life savings are already gone. Now we shall have to find up to another £100,000 by the time we have finished paying court costs."

The court yesterday allowed an appeal by Mr Woolls and overturned a Gloucester County Court ruling in 1997 that the Powlings owned the disputed 12ft-by-60ft strip by an old orchard drystone Mr Woolls had sold the Powlings the land on which their home stands in 1972, but retained ownership of an adjoining field.

Lord Justice Hirst and Mr Justice Cazalet ruled yesterday that the plan attached to the 1972 conveyance under which Mr Woolls originally sold the land to the Powlings clearly delineated the boundary and was conclusive proof that he owned the disputed strip.

While Mr Woolls was entitled only to £2 damages for trespass, the Powlings must pay 75 per cent of legal costs and Mr Woolls the remainder.

The Powling's son Mark, 48, said outside court afterwards: "This must be the most expensive piece of real estate in the world outside Hong Kong.

"I'm glad it's all over for my parents' sake. This dispute has destroyed their health and taken away their life

savings." - PA News 02-11-1999

THE Old Bailey jury in Britain's first war crimes trial were yesterday shown photographs of the East European Village where Anthony Sawoniuk, now 77, was alleged to have murdered Jews for the Nazis.

The pictures included scenes of the track that became known as the "road of death" down which men, women and children were herded to their executions.

 Domachevo, now in Belarus, where Mr Sawoniuk is alleged to have ordered four Jews to strip before shooting them and pushing them into open graves, has changed much since it fell to the horror of the Nazi war machine. But, as he took the jury through 40 recent photographs, John Nutting, QC, for the prosecution, identified many of the locations associated with the systematic murder of Jews.

His oldest exhibit, an aerial photograph of the village taken in 1944 by the Allies, showed that there was little left of the ghetto area where, two years earlier, 2,900 Jews had been massacred.

Mr Nutting also produced a photograph of the wooden house, still standing, which Mr Sawoniuk was said to have had removed from the ghetto and rebuilt for his own occupation.

Mr Sawoniuk, a retired British Rail ticket collector from Bermondsey, South London, faces four charges of murder under the War Crimes Act. He sat impassively as the photographs were displayed.  As though conducting a geography class, Mr Nutting patiently led the eight men and four women jurors through bundles of maps, photographs and computer images of the scenes of the alleged crimes.

 Although Mr Sawoniuk faces only four charges, the Old Bailey court has been given accounts of how he is alleged to have murdered many more, merely because they were Jews. On one occasion, he is said to have ordered about 15 weeping Jewish women, of various ages, to remove their clothes before shooting them with a sub-machinegun.

 Mr Nutting was introducing the jury to the maps and photographs in order to prepare them for their trip at the weekend, when they will travel to Belarus to see the scenes of the alleged crimes.

One photograph showed the memorial stone in the sand hills marking the mass grave where the Jews were massacred. Another photograph showed the site of the old police station from where Mr Sawoniuk, in his role as a member of the police force established by the Nazis, is said to have embraced the policy of the "Final Solution" with enthusiasm.

Mr Nutting showed the jury a number of photographs of the area known as the sand hills. A short distance from the village, this is where the 2,900 Jews were exterminated after being driven from their ghetto in the centre of the town on being told to report for a roll call.

The prosecution alleges that the sand hills, an area of trees and shrubs, is where in the following weeks Mr Sawoniuk executed others he had flushed out of their hiding places in a search-and-kill operation. While little remains of the original ghetto area where the Jews were kept behind barbed wire and allowed to freeze and starve during one of the worst winters in memory, the jury were shown photographs of the area as it is now to help them to follow the prosecution case.

Other pictures showed the blacksmith's shop from where witnesses claim they saw Mr Sawoniuk lead some of the Jews to their death.

The jury was also shown shots of the Catholic church from which, on the day of the main massacre on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, on Sunday, September 20, 1942, worshippers were ordered out to witness the scene being enacted outside.

One worshipper, Galina Puchkina, saw batches of between 50 and 70 Jews being led out of the ghetto and ordered to strip as they cried and screamed.

The Jews were then taken to the sand hills, from where Miss Puchkina and her sister heard the sounds of shooting, sub-machinegun fire and single shots.

The hearing continues.

The Times 11-02-1999

Energy firms defeated over pension raid

TWO pensioners who accused the electricity industry of raiding their pension funds have won a legal battle to

recover £2 billion. The ruling is expected to benefit 200,000 pensioners.

The Court of Appeal yesterday held that National Grid had acted unlawfully in taking £46.3 million in surpluses

from the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme in 1992 to pay for voluntary redundancies. A similar ruling was made

against National Power.

The case affects the 21 companies in the electricity supply industry and is expected to have implications for other

company pension schemes. Many have generated far more money than needed to pay pensioners because

investments have done so well.

Traditional "defined benefit" schemes - which pay pensioners about two thirds of final salary - are most likely

to be affected. Because of its significance, the case is likely to be appealed to the House of Lords, the court

was told.

The two pensioners who brought the case, David Laws, 61, and Reg Mayes, 75, former National Grid workers,

criticised the employers' attempt to "drag the process out further" by appeal. They demanded that repayments be

made to the funds immediately.

"We are pensioners and we want our money now," Mr Laws said. "The average widow's pension is twenty quid -

these people are dying in poverty every year, we can't wait another two years or more while they go to the

Lords."

The two men have been trying for six years to have the money returned. They went first to the Pensions

Ombudsman, who upheld their case, but the decision was overturned on appeal to the High Court in June 1997.

The pensioners then went to the Court of Appeal, which yesterday ruled that there was no provision in the scheme

giving employers a unilateral power to forgo their liabilities to pay contributions.

Lords Justices Nourse, Schiemann and Brooke said that an employer owed an implied obligation of good faith to

his employees. "This means that he must not, without reasonable and proper cause, conduct himself in a manner

calculated or likely to destroy or seriously damage the relationship of confidence and trust between employer and

employee.'' That obligation included a pension scheme.

The companies had argued that they could correct past overfunding by not paying contributions that had been

shown not to be needed.

National Grid said after the case that it was examining the judgment. It would not be known until a court hearing in

two months' time how much it would have to repay, and in the meantime it was considering whether to appeal.

Both power companies are confident that they will be able to change the rules of the pension schemes to let them

benefit from the surplus money retrospectively. The pensioners' solicitor, Peter Woods of Stephens Innocent, said

that despite the threat of an appeal to the Lords the decision was a "tremendous victory" which promised to lead to

increased benefits. The case could have implications for other such funds. "The whole pensions industry is

watching this case."

But Dougie Rooney of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, which has 30,000 members in the power

industry, said: "This is a disastrous decision. It could encourage companies throughout industry to

replace occupational schemes with 'money purchase' schemes which leave people worse off."

The Times 11-02-1999

BARRISTERS who are promoted to Queen's Counsel in Britain are earning an average of nearly £250,000 a year by

The time they are appointed. The selection process can cost the taxpayer £80,000 a year, but costs the successful

applicants just £150. However, a question tabled in the Commons by an MP who used to be a solicitor has brought

a reply that the system may be changed.

The figures for what barristers earn before being made QCs were released to Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for

Hendon. They are bound to fuel the case for the QC selection system to be funded by barristers. At present the

lengthy annual selection procedure known as the silk round occupies several months of civil servants' time and

is borne by the taxpayer. But earlier this week the Lord Chancellor indicated that he and his Minister of State,

Geoff Hoon, wanted to look at recovering the cost of the system from successful applicants. Lord Irvine of Lairg

said: "There is an analogy in the way that the civil courts recover their costs through fees charged."

About 10 per cent of the 8,000 barristers in private practice have taken silk. On average barristers apply 2

times each but some have applied as many as 25 times. Unsuccessful applicants were earning far less on average

than successful ones, with average gross earnings of £165,000, confirming the belief at the Bar that earnings

are a factor in the chances of success.

Mr Dismore, who used to brief barristers, said that the whole system needed to be made much more transparent

so that people knew why they were turned down.

There also needed to be a system of checks on the competence of QCs. "The Bar says this is a kind of

Kitemark but there is no way of knowing whether a QC is still up to the mark, no means of appraisal or even an

L-plate system. Once appointed, they can go on until they are 90."

More than 100 MPs have signed a motion tabled by Mr Dismore seeking a review of the silks system as part of

the present reform of the legal profession.

A spokesman for the Bar said that barristers would be perfectly happy with paying for the Queen's Counsel

selection system. "We have suggested this to officials ourselves, some time ago," he added.

two hearings before the House of Lords, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has told the Commons. In a

parliamentary reply to Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, he said that fees of counsel

totalled £123,625, but £18,000 was recoverable under a costs order made against General Pinochet in the High

Court, leaving a bill of £105,000 so far. Costs for the House of Lords hearings - estimated to be at least

£500,000 each - have yet to be decided. Judgment is expected in two or three weeks' time.

The Times 11-02-1999