Comments on: Was there an actual legal opinion?

By: Peter D. Tillman

Peter D. Tillman — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:24:36 +0000

Re: Peter D. Tillman (Nov 30 14:21), ... and now that I replied, WP dropped Curious's cmt to the end of the queue!

By: Peter D. Tillman

Peter D. Tillman — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:21:39 +0000

Re: curious (Nov 29 14:09), Note that WordPress is still posting replies as if received before the original comment -- in this case Boris's foolishness at Nov 29, 2010 at 1:58 PM

By: James Evans

James Evans — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:21:07 +0000

£ There you go. You can cut and paste that when you next need to talk about those curious ‘UK pounds’.

By: Watchman

Watchman — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:14:19 +0000

Probably worth pointing out that every UK University does have an in-house legal services team who would normally include the data protection officer. Therefore, there is a real possibility that this team was consulted.

However, if they were, there would be the option to FoI this correspondence, as this would not be a client relationship, but employees of the university. So it is rather unsurprising to find that UEA’s website does not indicate the existence of a legal service team, university solicitor or the like… It does mention Max Moseley giving a talk on the right to privacy though, which made me smile.

It is quite conceivable that UEA does not have its own solicitors (which leads to questions about how much it costs them to sign agreements and the like), but it seems more likely they are hidden somewhere, and if they can be found, then this information can be FoI’d.

By: Alexander K

Alexander K — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:08:39 +0000

The more one reads about the UEA’s Vice Chancellor and his relationship with probity and veracity, the more one becomes convinced both qualities are singularly absent from Dr Acton’s character.

By: Muir Russell Climategate review – evidence of missing evidence « The View From Here

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:30:24 +0000

[...] advised that his submission would not be published on the review website due to some (unpublished) legal advice that “it could be open to a claim of [...]

By: sleeper

sleeper — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:19:01 +0000

Re: Boris (Nov 29 13:58), Bored Boris?

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:17:28 +0000

I suspect the Muir Russell inquiry ran up their legal bill by getting advice on how to prevent the inquiry team from becoming personally exposed them to legal action in the course of the investigation. The lawyers probably reviewed every public statement the Inquiry has released.

In the process of investigating Phil Jones for misconduct or responding to a subpoena, is there any reason the UEA would be unable to access THEIR email systems on THEIR computers? I doubt it. The sensible conclusion is that the UEA refused to grant the Inquiry access to the undisclosed emails or the Inquiry didn’t want to ask for access and both parties tried to disguise their negligence with legal technicalities. (The situation is analogous to not asking Phil Jones if he deleted emails for fear the answer could be incriminating.)

What is an independent investigation? The Inquiry did not have the power to compel the UEA to do anything it wasn’t willing to do. The only power the Inquiry has over the UEA is the threat to quit or make any disagreement public in order to protect their personal reputations for integrity. Is there anything on the record to indicate that the Inquiry pushed the UEA about any issue?

By: Kenneth Fritsch

Kenneth Fritsch — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:49:21 +0000

I have a brother who was a lawyer and I would boldly put forth legal advice that I had received on my behalf without ever getting counsel from my brother. The bluff worked sometimes and sometimes it did not. With all the other contrivances that were apparently used in these cases to avoid revealing otherwise public information what is to say that they did not just kind of, sort of make this up. In the end, if it ever came to that, could not the person making this all up say that he was misinformed about the advice being from any actual legal counsel.

Is not this all just further evidence that if a public body chooses not to be forthcoming or comply with FOI that they can resist until someone with sufficient resources comes along and decides to litigate?

Then, of course, there are leaks that can short cut all this time and expense to all parties concerned and make the party who is hesitant to reveal whole once again.

By: David S

David S — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:45:29 +0000

It may be merely speculation, but it looks as though there are three possibilities here:
1) Acton had an informal chat with either an in-house lawyer (do they have any at UEA?) or someone on retainer, and then passed it on to Muir Russell as a legal opinion.
2) There was a formal legal opinion produced for UEA but this has not been disclosed to anyone, whether via FOIA or to Muir Russell, hence the lack of evidence.
3) Acton made the whole thing up.
None of these scenarios reflects well on either Acton or Muir Russell.