I write about legal costs, litigation funding and related questions arising in civil litigation. The emphasis is practical: what the authorities mean, how the rules operate and where the real risks lie.
The latest articles appear below. If you are looking for a particular area, the four broad gateways provide a quicker route into the archive.
Costs
Commercial costs, Part 36, QOCS, detailed assessment and related costs issues.
Litigation Funding
Funding agreements, ATE insurance, security for costs and the economics of litigation.
Solicitor-Client & Retainers
Solicitors Act assessments, retainers, CFAs, DBAs, success fees and deductions from damages.
Group & Specialist Litigation
Collective proceedings, group litigation and selected wider developments affecting civil justice.
Recent analysis
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Costs by Zoom II
More than 600 of you have signed up for the seminar by Zoom, on Personal Injury Costs 2021. Astonishing really, considering you have to buy your own coffee and those dinky little pastries. But the technology can’t cope with the strain, as Zoom only permits 500 online at a time. So we are going to…
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The goblins’ dungeon
When I was young and growing up in the early 1980s, the principal object of desire amongst my peer group was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum micro-computer. The 48k version. Not the 16k version, which was no use to man nor beast, but the 48k version which boasted an impressive palette of 8 colours, and had…
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Costs by Zoom
Notwithstanding the perils of potentially appearing as virtual tabby cats, Craig Ralph and I are taking to Zoom next month to discuss hot topics in Personal Injury Costs 2021 including the whiplash reforms, hourly rates, costs budgeting and solicitor-own client costs challenges. Please join us by booking your place, by clicking the link below. www.kingschambers.com/latest-news/seminars-and-conferences/
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Costs and personal injury lawyers
Each year, for longer than I care to remember (a further sign of old age) I prepare and write a paper on issues in costs which are likely to affect personal injury lawyers. When I was a member of Ropewalk Chambers, I used to deliver the paper as part of their annual personal injury conference.…
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Mastercard bounces back
A very important case which has run and run, and will continue to run (the next hearing is in March 2021) is that of Mastercard Incorporated and others v Walter Hugh Merricks CBE [2020] UKSC 51 which has recently been to the Supreme Court. For the time poor, a summary of the judgment can be…
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Piling Pelion on Ossa
Then the omnipotent Father with his thunder made Olympus tremble, and from Ossa hurled Pelion. -Ovid Channelling the spirit of Trafigura, is an interesting case decided by Mr Justice Turner by way of strike out application in the latter months of last year, that of In the matter of the Fundao Dam Disaster [2020] EWHC 2930…
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Oliver’s Army
Don’t start that talking, I could talk all nightMy mind was sleepwalking, While I’m putting the world to rightCall careers information, Have you got yourself an occupation? -Elvis Costello Race discrimination is a pernicious evil in our society. In the nearly 20 years I practised in discrimination law, as well as sex and disability discrimination…
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B2B
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” -David Copperfield, Charles Dickens One of the oddities of the Small Claims Track in this country, is that for many small claims cases, by which I mean cases worth less than…