When courts set a new precedent, are the negatively impacted parties given any leniency? Suppose the courts set a precedent by interpreting ambiguous law in a way that negatively affects one of the parties of a case. When deciding on remedies, damages, or a criminal sentence, will courts sometime show any consideration for the losing party since they could not know how the law would be interpreted?
This answer is under United States law. Usually, when a court interprets the law in a way that was previously ambiguous, parties are not given any leniency for not knowing in advance how an issue will be resolved. Sometimes, when a court overrules prior precedent with a new precedent the court will grant some leniency, if there is an easy way to do so. For example, in the Colorado case of Warne v. Hall, 2016 CO 50, the Colorado Supreme Court made the level of detail required in documents commencing civil lawsuits in the state was made much more strict, reversing long standing prior binding precedents in the state on the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court had done the same thing in federal cases, but the Colorado Court of Appeals at the time had repeatedly declined to apply the federal standard to state court cases. In Warne, the party whose legal documents were held to be insufficiently detailed was allowed, on remand to the trial court for further proceedings, to try to amend those documents to meet the new standard (for what it is worth, he didn't succeed on remand). This is usually not done, however, in &quot;writing on the wall&quot; situations where the new decision overruling prior law was obvious from an amendment to the statute that an older case interpreted, or from a previous new court precedent that overruled prior law in some circumstances and made it very likely that addition related binding case law would also be overruled, even if the previous landmark precedent didn't necessarily have that result. An exception applies in cases where a law enforcement officer is accused of violating someone's civil rights. In those cases, liability is only imposed on the officer if the fact that the conduct violated the plaintiff's legal rights was &quot;clearly established&quot; by statutes and case law at the time that the law enforcement officer took the action giving rise to the lawsuit, under a doctrine known as &quot;qualified immunity&quot;. If the law was ambiguous at the time that the law enforcement officer took action, &quot;qualified immunity&quot; bars the lawsuit. Similar considerations apply in favor of the government in some habeas corpus litigation in federal court (where a state court conviction is collaterally attacked after direct appeals are exhausted).
Most advice that a lawyer gives is subjective; facts are objective but opinions are always subjective. What a lawyer does when they advise a client is typically called a "legal opinion". The reason it is subjective is that, as Dale M said, there are numerous variants that go into an opinion, and reasonably trained professionals (attorneys) can disagree as to the outcome of a specific factual predicate. Often times, case outcomes will differ based on the application of the facts to the law, so much so that the case outcome can differ based on the choice of words a witness uses, or even the way a judge interprets the law. This is why unlike truly objective discipline such as mathematics, where there is a right and wrong answer, no lawyer can ever say a case will definitely go one way or another. It will always be dependent on perception, which is the very definition of subjective. So, whoever indicated that lawyers don't give subjective advice was simply misinformed. They do. What they try not to do is make value-judgments, saying that things are good or bad; rather, they are trained to indicate whether something is illegal or not, or likely to get you sued or not. However, these are all legal opinions.
Does this create precedent? NO This was a Crown Court case, only the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal can set precedent which it did with similar circumstances in R v Hill 1989
Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.
Acrimony Mowzer makes some good points. Another one is the parties may just hate each other. In some strands of legal theory, it's considered a type of transaction cost that keeps people from bargaining before and after litigation.
The precedent is very clear and was accurately applied by the judge A treaty does not create domestic law and is only applicable to the extent that it is incorporated into domestic law. She extensively quotes the relevant precedents in the judgement at [42-49].
When the US Supreme Court "overturns" a precedent, it does not usually mean that every case which previously cited the older holding instantly vanishes or is upset. Indeed, often the older case is not truly overturned, but "distinguished", meaning the circumstances of the new case are different enough that the old rule does not apply. But, at least in theory, a case exactly similar to the old one would still follow the old rule. Sometimes such "distinguishing" cases pile up until nothing is left of the old rule. Even when one case overturns an earlier one more dramatically, it may not be instantly total. For example, West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) directly overturned Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923) and by implication Lochner v. New York (1905) But the tide had started to turn against Lochner some years earlier in Nebbia v. New York (1934), and Lochner continued to be cited favorably in some cases until United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938). In Lincoln Federal Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron &amp; Metal Co (1949) Justice Black (appointed 1937) wrote that the Lochner line of cases had been "repudiated". A more dramatic case of an overturned precedent was West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) (the 2nd flag salute case) which directly ruled the exact opposite of Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940). The membership of the court was largely the same, and the time lapse quite short. The Court essentially changed its collective mind, largely adopting the view of the dissent in the earlier case. Another example of an extreme reversal is Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which denied that any black could be a US citizen. This was overturned by the outcome of the US Civil War, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. In general when an earlier case is overruled, the change is not retroactive. Old cases are not undone. But new cases will be less likely to cite the overturned case (except possibly as a bad example), and it will no longer be considered good law to mandate a decision in a lower court. This is particularly true if several new cases, over a period of time, follow the new rule or principle.
I am wondering if the government can still implement it and force people to pay even if the decision is challenged in court. Laws are not automatically put on hold because they are challenged. For an action or a law to be halted by the Court before a decision is made, the applicant would have to seek an interlocutory injunction, which are granted only if, as established in RJR-MacDonald Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1994] 1 SCR 311, (i) is there a serious issue to be tried, (ii) will the party seeking the injunction suffer irreparable harm if it is not granted, and (iii) does the balance of convenience favour the party seeking the injunction. The first issue is rarely a problem, especially for a controversial issue like this. I am thinking the government might be able to tax people and then refund people if the court doesn't uphold the decision instead of a court challenge being able to postpone the tax indefinitely. A quantifiable financial harm is rarely irreparable (in private law cases). However there is an important exception for Charter cases where a financial harm is assumed to be irreparable because damages are often not awarded in constitutional cases. Though in this case it might be considered reparable because the quantification of damage and the method of redress are straightforward. For the third question, the Court needs to weigh both sides' interests in the case where the injunction is granted. Even if the damage is deemed irreparable, the Court may (or may not) still find the public interest in health outweighs the financial interests of the unvaccinated.