956 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 79 PART 6 NOVEMBER 2021
Various U.S. law firms advertise class proceedings related to the recall of
2005–2010 Pontiac Solstice vehicles. Those law firms include Pennsylvania’s
Munley Law firm, which explains on its website that “General Motors
has recently recalled approximately 2.6 million vehicles due to defective
ignition switches that may suddenly, and without warning, shut off the Pontiac
Solstice’s engine and disable its airbags. Heavy and bulky key chains as
well as bumpy roads can cause the ignitions to switch out of the ‘run’ position
and shut off”, with potentially tragic consequences.
Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” has featured in U.S. case law
including Nemer Jeep-Eagle, Inc. v. Jeep-Eagle Sales Corporation, 992 F.2d 430
(1993). There, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit considered
the lower court’s application of the principles related to preliminary injunctions
when it should instead have applied the principles underpinning specific
performance. The Court of Appeals commented that “R. Frost’s
journeyer, after choosing ‘The Road Not Taken,’ darkly observed, ‘and that
has made all the difference.’ … Here too the district court took a less travelled
road, which made all the difference in the result it reached. Taking the
wrong legal path led it to the wrong destination.”
A rather biting dissent in Pacific First Bank v. The New Morgan Park Corporation,
122 Or. App. 401 (1993) noted that “when we come to a fork in the
road, we need not, like Robert Frost, ‘take the road less travelled by.’ We
should take the better road”.
Stonehenge attracts visitors wanting to celebrate the winter and summer
solstices there. Recently, Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site Limited partially
succeeded on its application for judicial review of the Secretary of
State for Transport’s decision to grant a development consent order for the
construction of a new portion of the A303 that “would have a dual instead
of a single carriageway and would run in a tunnel 3.3 km long through the
Stonehenge part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites World
Heritage Site” (“WHS”): 2021 EWHC 2161(Admin.). As Justice Holgate
noted in the course of detailed and technical reasons for judgment, in 1986
the World Heritage Committee inscribed Stonehenge and Avebury as a
WHS having “Outstanding Universal Value” (“OUV”). The WHS is said to be
of OUV for qualities which include the following:
• Stonehenge is one of the most impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments
in the world on account of the sheer size of its megaliths, the
sophistication of its concentric plan and architectural design, the
shaping of the stones, uniquely using both Wiltshire Sarsen sandstone
and Pembroke Bluestone, and the precision with which it was built.