In this case, decided yesterday, the court struck out the claimants’ case alleging that deaths were caused by, or materially contributed to, by the negligence of the defendant. The court had the important caveats in relation to the striking out…
This judgment today is an interesting illustration of the fact that those providing support to a party can find themselves the subject of a non-party costs order. In this case the claimant company was in liquidation. The respondents to the…
It is rare to see a fully reasoned judgment from the High Court in relation to an application for pre-action disclosure. Here we have a case where the rules and principles were considered an applied. There are some important lessons…
The interest rates payable on Court Fund accounts have decreased. THE CHANGES The changes are announced here. They took effect on the 9th January 2026. Special Account – decreased from 4.00% to 3.75% Basic Account – decreased from 3.00%…
Here we consider an argument that it was an abuse of process for a litigant to argue issues that were directly related to another action between the parties that had been stayed. The judge held that this was not an…
Here we are looking at an unusual appeal. The appellant argued firstly that the judge should have found for them on a point that was not pleaded. A second argument was that the judge should have assessed loss on a…
When a party is dissatisfied with the result of a hearing and has exhausted the appeal process there is often little they can do. One potential remedy is to bring a second action seeking to set aside the first on…
The rules, and often the courts, are keen to encourage payments on account of costs. They have advantages to both parties. The receiving party receives a large percentage of costs promptly, the paying party reduces the amount of interest that…
This post reminds claimants that service can take place under s.1140 of the Companies Act on an individual in their capacity as an individual. It also serves as a reminder to defendants, and anyone who is a company director that…
This is the first time I have seen Mazur mentioned and considered in an issue as to rights of audience. In this case the judge held that the representative sent by the claimant to attend a small claims trial did…
We are looking at a case where we get a hint of a defence that was so defective that, ultimately, the defendant agreed it should be struck out and entirely repleaded. It provides an object lesson on how a defence…
This blog celebrates its 13th birthday later this year. Civil Litigation Brief started as a series in the Solicitors Journal 35 years ago. Needless to say it has a large “back catalogue”. I wanted a regular opportunity to bring important…
Here we are looking at an old case. However it has only recently arrived on BAILII and deals with an issue that remains relevant today. The Court of Appeal considered the issue of when is it appropriate for a judge…
As promised we are looking at a second case where an expedited hearing was refused. The judge here went through the principles relating to expedition and found that good reasons had not been made out. The judge also rejected an…
Here we are looking at an argument by a paying party that costs payable at an application should be reduced because the work would be required to be done at a later stage in any event. (The judge has no…
This is the first of two cases today where we look at examples where the courts have refused to grant an order for an expedited trial. This case was an unusual one, the judge reviewed the established principles and found…
In this case the claimant appealed against the findings of fact that the court made at first instance. However those findings were made on the basis of written evidence that was before the court. The claimant had not applied for…
A party liable to pay the costs of a successful opponent is always keen to reduce that liability, not least by arguing that they should have a reduction in costs because of their opponent’s conduct. We see such an argument…
We are returning to the issue of hourly rates. In this case the receiving party sought hourly rates that were above the London 1 band. The judge held that the case did not fall within that band and certainly did…
Here we look at a case where, unusually, the judge overturned first instance findings of dishonesty. The circumstances in which those findings were made were seriously flawed. Important procedural safeguards had not been in place, not least the allegations…
This is an interesting “cost bite” issue. What is the position on VAT when an insurer is being sued under the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 but the insured has gone into voluntary liquidation? Is a paying party…
Here we have problems with the way in which handwriting experts were instructed. The difficulty being that different experts were given different documents. This led to difficulties at trial. However, ultimately, it did not favour the defendants. The judge was…
There have been a number of cases in recent years where judges have been wary (sometimes highly sceptical) of expert witnesses who make their living solely from being involved in litigation. We have another example here. There is no indication…
Here we have an interesting case about the alleged professional negligence of solicitors. The case did not get very far, being struck out at first instance and with that decision upheld by the Court of Appeal. Put simply the claimants…
In this judgment today the Court of Appeal refused an application by an appellant to rely on amended Particulars of Claim or adduce new evidence in a case where the claim was struck out. The Court made the point that…
Here we have an example of a case where the allegations against the proposed (Part 20) defendant were inadequately pleaded. So inadequate that the judge struck out the particulars and refused the applicant’s permission to rely on amended particulars (which…
Practitioners in every field of litigation need to be aware of the need to prove causation in addition to breach. This requirement can sound particularly harshly in clinical negligence. We see an example here. There were some breaches of the…
Last week we looked a case where the parties to a day long application had incurred costs over of £1.3 million. That case emphasises that applications can be expensive. Further they can sometimes be expensive, leaving the applicant in a…
Keeping things running smoothly is an essential part of the litigator’s job. It is not easy. This series of webinars looks at key practice and problem areas with the specific aim of avoiding problems and (if necessary) dealing with difficulties…
The previous post on the updating of the Guideline Hourly rates leads us to this next case. It poses the question – are the rates “somewhat out of date”. As we shall see the judge gives a clear answer. (There…
The new Guideline hourly rates were published yesterday. They take effect from 1st January 2026 (for anyone working on that day…). They have been updated using service producer price inflation (SPPI). THE INCREASES The increases are 2.28%, using the…
We look at many cases on this blog where litigants (often more accurately – litigators) experience major procedural difficulties. It is surprising how often these difficulties arise from a very basic failure. That is a failure to follow a rule,…
There are some interesting observations here about the strategy a party should adopt when facing an application to amend. Such an application is not a “mini trial”. It is clear from this case that substantial costs can be incurred in…
The last Witness Evidence Wednesday of the year deals with an unusual case relating to relief from sanctions following a failure to serve witness evidence timeously. The judge at first instance had refused the claimant’s application for relief from sanctions. …
If a claimant serves proceedings and then does nothing the rules impose an automatic stay on proceedings. CPR 15.11 states that a stay takes effect from 6 months after the date on which a defence should have been filed. Here…
It is always interesting to look back and see what are the most popular posts each year. Sometimes this contains surprises, sometimes it says something about the state (or at least the interests) of the legal profession. Here are…
Here we look at an unusual application to challenge jurisdiction under CPR Part 11. It was unusual because it invited the court to consider the case on the merits. The court was not impressed with this approach, declaring it to…
I have saved this topic from being the 13th in the series. However it may be fitting if it was. From the moment I read the the Mazur judgment for the first time it was clear that it was going…
Consideration of the opening lines of judgments has been a feature of this blog for some years now. It has sometimes been a way of providing a little light relief towards the end of what is often a 12 month…
Issues relating to bundles have always been a part of this blog. These are issues that litigators ignore at their peril. Judges coming to the case afresh will not know your legal qualifications, the eminence of your practice and initially…
There have been times in the past when it has felt that the issue of sanctions for non-compliance was the only issue in civil procedure. The number of (reported) cases has reduced, possibly because the relevant principles are now clear….
A judgment debtor is in a vulnerable position. There are companies out there taking advantage of that vulnerability by pretending to be official enforcement agencies and taking money off the debtors. We have such a case reported here. The judge…
The “Proving things” series is the longest running feature of this blog. Initially I thought it would be a series of then posts. I was planning to end it at a hundred when a chance conversation on the Leeds Legal…
The Court of Appeal is to hear the appear in the Mazur decision on the 24th February. Here we re-visit the arguments that the Law Society and the SRA put forward at first instance. It will be interesting to see…
It is clear that many judge’s approach witness statements with a degree of scepticism, regarding them more as a lawyer’s construct than the actual recollection of the witness. In this case the defendant’s own witness statement included passages that were…
The “Current importance of Pleadings” series started in March of this year. It is another one of those issues that has featured heavily throughout. Being able to focus on “pleading” issues in a particular series has been useful. The problems…
Later this month we are taking our traditional end of year look at “opening lines of judgments”. Sometimes opening lines provide a clue as to the judge’s thinking. When the first sentence contains the words “I think it is considerably…
I am surprised (but perhaps shouldn’t be) at the sheer number of cases involving experts that the blog has covered this year. In July I started the “Expert Watch” series to focus on cases about the conduct of experts and…
It is unusual for a judge to consider the admissibility of witness evidence on the first day of a trial. However, in some ways, this is an unusual case. The judge found that the statement was relevant to the pleaded…
Here we have an all too familiar story of a claimant’s case coming to grief because proceedings were not issued in time. The unusual aspect is that this happened because his solicitors lodged papers at court asserting that no court…
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