Here we look at a case where a party was seeking a stay of litigation on medical grounds. Medical evidence was provided which supported the litigant’s stance. The claimant took objection to the report as it contained “opinion” and the…
Here we are looking at a judgment in a group litigation claim where the judge had to assess the evidence of numerous witnesses. The feature I want to look at is the way in which claims for damages were put…
If any members of the profession are entitled to be disgruntled (to put it mildly) about the decision in Mazur it is CILEX members who conduct litigation. They have hard earned qualifications and extensive experience. However, unless they come within…
Here we are looking at an attempt by a paying party defendant to raise issues of conduct, including potential fundamental dishonesty, at the assessment of costs stage. The defendant argued (or attempted to argue) that the costs judge should take…
The periodical reminder that this series is aimed at looking at what goes on “on the ground” in the world of costs, in addition to looking at important developments in case law. It is to allow litigators to gain “a…
The webinar on Friday the 3rd October will deal with many of the major issues that arise from the the decision in Mazur & Anor v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB). One interesting aspect of the case is…
We are looking at a case where expert evidence was of considerable importance. The claimants had already had permission to rely upon one of their experts disallowed because of issues relating to conduct. Here we have an example of the…
There have been some interesting decisions this year about the significance of the joint meeting of experts and also about the role of the “joint expert”. These decisions will be looked at in this webinar as they highlight the importance…
NB THIS DECISION THAT THE SOLICITOR WAS DISHONEST WAS OVERTURNED BY THE COURT OF APPEAL SEE Grosvenor Property Developers Ltd v Portner Law Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 1238 (02 October 2026) This is an important and interesting case about findings…
The webinar on Friday the 3rd October will deal with many of the major issues that arise from the the decision in Mazur & Anor v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341 (KB). However it is clear that it…
I have written before about the “heavy lifting” that sometimes takes place when practitioners attempt to invoke CPR 3.10. Here we look at a case where CPR 3.10 was used to condemn a claimant who had used the wrong procedure…
The judge in this case considered whether the medical evidence established that driving at a lower speed would have “significantly reduced” the injuries that the claimant suffered. This is often a difficult matter to prove. (The evidence on whether…
When a court makes an order as to the means of alternative service it expects the party in question to comply with that order. Here we have a case where the claimant decided on a different means of “serving” the…
Here we are looking a judicial observations about the role of forensic reconstruction experts. There are telling comments on the reasons the judge preferred one expert over another. Again it comes down to a simple failure to consider and apply…
The fallout, concern and – dare I say it – recriminations in relation to the decision in Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys continues. There has been a lot of commentary already. This webinar aims to look through the “chatter” by concentrating…
It is fitting that on witness evidence Wednesday we are also looking at a case where there was a wholesale failure to comply with the rules relating to evidence from those whose primary language is not English. The breaches in…
Here we are looking at judicial fact finding when a judge was considering witness evidence as to an accident that had happened some 12 1/2 years before the date of the trial. Like many such accidents it happened in a…
There has been much discussion of the advantages, and disadvantages, in lawyers using AI. This is clearly going to be a major issue for the legal profession going forwarded. Last week I reviewed Andrew Hogan’s book on this topic. There…
Here we look at an ingenious argument about the meaning of “proceedings” and the costs consequences if a claimant has an injunction order set aside. The claimant argued that the nature of the action he pursued did not amount to…
The Chancery Guide was updated earlier this month. Here we look at the Practice Note and have a link to the updated Guide itself. FINDING THE LINK The Practice Note that accompanies it gives a link to the Guide itself…
We are looking at a case where the claimant’s expert, belatedly, accepted that the reports he was relying on were unreliable. The claimant then attempted to introduce new matters and evidence to bolster an alternative case. The judge rejected that…
The motivation for this series arises from a personal experience earlier this year. I had travelled to a hotel in readiness for a trial the following day. At midnight I found out that the other side were asking for an…
Readers may know my colleague Andrew Hogan as the author of the extremely useful “Costs Barrister” blog. Subscribers to LinkedIn may well follow his regular activities and photos of Labradors & other canines (which he tells me prove to be…
We continue to look at the case considered in the previous post. Having made the point that the budget is not so much about hourly rates but about the reasonableness and proportionality of the figures as a whole the judge…
At the budgeting phase of a case there are often disputes as to the appropriate hourly rates. The response is, usually, that it is not the court’s task on budgeting to set the hourly rates but to consider the reasonableness…
I have written three posts on the decision in Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys already. This judgment has profound practical implications for the profession in the way it manages cases and supervises staff. This webinar on the 3rd October 2025…
Issues relating to the effective and efficient delegation of tasks in litigation have never been more important. The significance relates to efficiency, costs and compliance with the litigator’s professional and statutory obligations. These matters are being considered in detail in…
We are returning to a case we have looked at several times already. This time on the question of costs. Since the appellants were successful the costs order against them was overturned. However it was held that the judge erred…
I had a helpful comment from a subscriber yesterday about the ease in which they could access posts. They were finding that when they clicked on the link in the email this was taking them to the first page of…
As I said yesterday the matters discussed in the recent judgment about whether a fee earner can conduct litigation may have a widespread impact. It is important that litigators are aware of the views of the Law Society and the…
I have been considering a series on judicial observations on witness evidence for some time. It seems like a good idea to put this in the middle of the week so we have a regular reminder of how significant these…
We are looking at a High Court decision that could have major ramifications for the way in which firms of solicitors organise their practices. In particular in relation to the qualifications of staff who conduct litigation, what is meant by…
We are continuing with our consideration of Damages-Based Agreements that were found to be unlawful. This time the judge considered the position in relation to counsel’s fees and the Regulations. The judge held that the attempt to charge counsel’s fees…
Today we are looking at a case where the appellants claim to £1.3 million in costs was lost because the Damages-Based Agreements were found to be unlawful and unenforceable. It provides a salutary lesson to all those who are involved…
It is not unknown for debtors to seek to transfer property to another person in an attempt to avoid a charging order being made against it. We see see such a case here. A house, initially in the sole name…
Here we are looking at a substantial reduction in a budget. The claimants here sought £39,967.50 for each meeting of the solicitors co-ordinating group litigation. The court was not happy with this… (When you are claiming £39,967.5o a meeting for…
The way in which the “Expert Watch” series has quickly developed shows that issues relating to expert evidence continue to give rise to problems. These three webinars explore many of the major issues in relation to experts. Dealing with the…
Many of the cases relating to civil evidence and social media involve “drama” of some sort, particularly in relation to allegations of fundamental dishonesty and fraud. Here we look at the use of social media in a different, but still…
We have another example of a lawyer getting into trouble (potentially very serious trouble) through the use of Artificial Intelligence and its ability to “hallucinate” cases. It was accepted that the error was not deliberate. However the Upper Tribunal pointed…
We are looking at a number of cases that, on the face of it, are highly unusual. One judge has already indicated that there is a strong prima facie cases that some related cases “are all fraudulent”. There are…
Earlier today I warned that a recent decision by the Divisional Court in relation to CPR 6.15 was unusual and should not give great comfort to litigators generally, later we looked at the new Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide which…
When the parties agree a phase of a budget this can, on the face of it, have a knock on effect on the related phases. But, as Cab Calloway famously said – that ain’t necessarily so. In the case we…
There appears to be no end to the practice of witnesses giving the court the benefit of their opinion in witness statements. There have been numerous cases where the judiciary have warned against this. The white book has a specific…
There is a new edition of The Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide 2025 available on the Judiciary website. It contains clear guidance on procedure and, as the Preface makes clear, is keen to help practitioners avoid common procedural pitfalls. It…
Here we look at some interesting observations made about the process of drafting witness statements. The court was budgeting the process and considering an argument that there should be “numerous reviews and peer-reviews” during the process of drafting the statements….
Here we are looking at an unusual case in relation to service. It is a case where the claimant served at the wrong address but (unusually) the court exercised its discretion to retrospectively validate service. There is more to this,…
I don’t know how many planning lawyers subscribe to this site – it may be none do. However I am fairly confident that they could get full value out of their subscription if it persuaded them to pay attention to…
We are looking at a case that has already been subject to several posts on this site. In the previous decision about budgeting the claimants’ budgets were described as “absurdly high” and the arguments “strains all credulity”. The court is…
We are here honing on in one aspect of a decision that was about allocation. The judge commented on how poor the pleadings of both side were. The Particulars of Claim and Defence were too long, a Reply was unnecessary. …
Here we are looking at the (to my mind somewhat risky) practice of applying for and obtaining an injunction, without actually issuing proceedings. This judgment is a reminder that this should only happen in exceptional circumstances. (This was an injunction…
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