English law

No, that was, that was more, uh, in Europe and for heresy.

I mean, the reason that they were hanged is that's what they did in England, so they were following English law.

Oh, okay.

Now, one of the things, one of the things about hanging, if you've watched a lot of Westerns where they get the gallows all built and-

Well, for starters, the devil had come to them and had-

Mm-hmm

... them sign his book, usually in blood, and, um, as, as a result, they would make this pact, and supposedly the devil would help them with things, come up with money for them, nice clothes, protection from, uh, the indigenous people who were attacking a lot of the English.

And, um, also, the devil would issue each of these witches, and men and women, I mean, 25% of the people who were accused of being witches were men, and they would be issued a familiar.

I've often been involved in European and particularly German restructuring cases over the years.

So many of the key restructurings have involved an interplay between European corporates, and they have some English element, often in the holding company or the financing structure, which is what makes them both fascinating and sometimes a little complicated.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to talk about France with a leading expert, Sam Golshani.

Today, I'm delighted to focus on Germany, the country with many companies in distress and arguably, arguably at the center of European distress at the moment.

But sadly, in July twenty-twenty-six, it was back in an insolvency process.

So we'll talk about that.

Another crucial point of interest from a UK-US fund perspective is that a Frankfurt court has refused to recognize an English restructuring plan over German law debt, which poses the question in our title: Does the UK still have a role? As you can see, we are blessed with not one but three guests today, all from Luther, one of Germany's leading law firms, which has a strong position advising the so-called Mittelstand.

And it has a practice that has experience in StaRUG, self-administrations, protective shields, insolvency plans, and distressed M&A.

Founded in 1880.

They are a well-established part of English football.

They've got a rich history.

But of course their success over the last 10, 15 years has been massively accelerated because of what we've seen.

This is about protecting the league as well.

When we talk about finding the punishment that fits the crime, it's...

English law is not about being punitive.

It's very different from other countries.

You then say, well, and again, I massively generalize here, but in a civil context or civil law context, contracts generally tend to be shorter because those contracts don't want to state what is seen to be the obvious.

conceptually a common law lawyer will have difficulty with that um and what they'll ultimately say is the law or the facts of the situation will fill in the gaps so when they are reading a contract again their starting proposition is what do the words mean and you give a literal interpretation they then go they then approach analysis of ambiguity in a slightly different philosophical way, which is what was the intent of the contract at the time the parties were trying to achieve it? So they don't have that sort of very objective, you know, those are the words that English law will say, and it may sometimes result in neither party's understanding of what the contract might have been being interpreted as being the contractual obligation.

the civil law system will do something different.

So it's difficult.

And when it comes to international contracting, the sort of day-to-day, it's interesting to see how those different cultures, people with those sort of different understandings of how systems work and how relationships work come together to try and resolve things.

And that's a fascinating part, actually, about doing this sort of work, that one will see the same problem emerge over and over again in different parts of the world, but you will see different ways that people try to resolve them.

And that also creates risk, which contracts don't always foresee, because you can see a situation where... an English and American outfit when a trigger event under the contract requires a notice to be served, they will serve that notice.

You might find that in a civil jurisdiction, sometimes in the Middle East or in Asia, serving a notice might be seen as being too hostile, too aggressive, and they don't want to upset the counterparty because actually the relationship is quite good, irrespective of what the contractual mechanism requires them to do.

Okay, good question.

So in reality, an Islamic will is an English will.

It's an English will with a particular distribution, because if it wasn't an English will, it wouldn't be valid under English law.

English law has a concept known as testamentary freedom.

Testamentary freedom is a great idea.

It means you can do whatever you want under your estate.

And the opposite of having complete testamentary freedom, and English law has almost complete testamentary freedom, is something called forced heirship, where you are forced to divide your assets as demanded by the state.

So, for example, it must pass to the eldest son or it must pass to your spouse.

Welcome back to English and Welsh Police Law Explained, the podcast where we break down criminal legislation into clear, simple explanations using real-life examples.

I'm your host, Stephen, and this week we're looking at legislation that protects people in premises from those outside, under the Criminal Law Act of 1977.

In this episode, we'll look at exactly what Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act prohibits, who is protected, and the general rights of occupation.

This legislation requires more than simply showing that someone forced their way into a premises.

The circumstances surrounding the entry, the presence and opposition of another person, the suspect's knowledge and any lawful authority or statutory exemption must all be considered.

Thanks for listening to English and Welsh Police Law Explained.

If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe and share it with colleagues, students or anyone studying criminal law.

Join me next time where we'll break down another area of legislation in a simple practical way.