Contracting Out of Fiduciary Duties

A significant implication arising out of an increasingly influential view that fiduciary duties are terms expressed or implied into voluntary undertakings is that all express or implied fiduciary duties can be excluded. This article critiques this implication by advancing the argument that this implication is doctrinally unjustified and normatively questionable through an analysis of the circumstances in which directors’ fiduciary duties have been contracted out under English law.postprin

Ex Turpi Causa: Reformation Not Revolution

Seldom has an area of law been so afflicted with uncertainties and contradictions as the illegality defence and rarely have judicial opinions been so sharply divided as in the Supreme Court decision in Patel v. Mirza. There nine Justices examined the issue of what the correct approach to the illegality defence is. Six of them endorsed the ‘range of factors’ approach whereas three condemned it. This paper defends the majority’s approach against the minority’s criticisms and argues that refinements have to be made to it in order to ameliorate the concern of uncertainty that may arise from its application.preprin

Corporate Law, Private Law and Instrumentalism

This article seeks to enrich our understanding of corporate law and private law. Deploying insights from the rights-based analysis in private law, this article argues that corporate law, in its instrumentalist conception, is unable to properly account for a defining feature of private law disputes, its bipolar structure consisting of the correlative and personality elements. Through a critical examination of certain corporate law cases, this article shows that the rejection of instrumentalist considerations by the rights-based thesis is unwarranted; it demonstrates how judges in private law disputes can accommodate instrumentalist considerations in a structured, coherent and restrained fashion

Attribution and the Fraud Exception

This note which appeared in [2015] LMCLQ 14 critically examines Moulin Global Eyecare Trading Ltd v The Commissioner of Inland Revenue [2014] HKEC 419, the most important decision on corporate attribution by the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal

Multiplex PCR for the detection of urogenital pathogens in mothers and newborns

Abstract Two duplex PCR assays were established for the detection of C. trachomatis (Ct), N. gonorrhoeae (GC), M. hominis (Mh), and U. urealyticum (Uu). These assays were used on clinical specimens obtained from women with Premature Rupture of Membrane or Post Partum Fever, from preterm infants, as well as from women with uneventful pregnancies and their babies delivered vaginally at term. The analytical sensitivity of the duplex PCR assays with internal controls incorporated is 7.0, 19.0, 5x10 3 and 7x10 2 genome copies per reaction for Ct, GC, Mh and Uu respectively. Specificity was demonstrated by the amplification of only target DNA in the presence of other organisms. Among 40 women with normal, at term, deliveries, there were 6 positives for Ct, 2 for GC and 1 for Uu. None of these women had signs of genital tract infection. The Mh/Uu PCR was positive in 11 of 40 PROM cases, with 7 women positive for Uu, 2 for Mh and 2 others for both organisms. Of 40 blood cultures taken from post-partum maternal infections, 6 were positive for Ct and 1 for Mh. Respiratory secretions from 30 premature neonates yielded 5 positives for Uu and one each for Mh and Ct. In contrast, there was only 1 positive result (for Mh) in 30 mature neonates. With 1 exception, all mycoplasma and ureaplasma positives were confirmed by culture and the concordance between paired tracheal aspirates and nasopharyngeal swabs from neonates was 96.7%. These results show the potential use of the duplex PCR assays for the diagnosis of maternal and neonatal disease caused by the four urogenital pathogens

S14-1 [26] The role of the Learning Organization to effect successful change: VTC a case study

© 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Higher education has expanded rapidly since the last century following a global trend that has strengthened in recent decades (Lo & Tang, 2017). The main cause of this expansion being attributed to national competitiveness and the essential role which higher education plays especially in the context of the emerging knowledge economy. Globalization’s effect on higher education has been significant and substantive (Lo & Tang, 2017). One of these effects is the increase in access to higher education to a much greater proportion of the population (Eftimie, 2017)

The Role of the Learning Organization to Effect Successful Change: VTC—A Case Study

© 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Higher education has expanded rapidly since the last century following a global trend that has strengthened in recent decades (Lo & Tang, 2017). The main cause of this expansion being attributed to national competitiveness and the essential role which higher education plays especially in the context of the emerging knowledge economy. Globalization’s effect on higher education has been significant and substantive (Lo & Tang, 2017). One of these effects is the increase in access to higher education to a much greater proportion of the population (Eftimie, 2017)