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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The Lord of Misrule
Regretfully, I had to change my plans this weekend as our village’s Brexit street party, to celebrate the country’s liberation from vassalage and rebirth as an independent nation was inexplicably cancelled. Whether a new date will be fixed for the party, remains to be seen. Goodness knows what I will do in the meantime with…
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Herbert v HH Law Limited
Yesterday argument concluded in the Court of Appeal at 5pm, in the case of Herbert v HH Law Limited. The division of the Court of Appeal hearing the appeal was presided over by the Master of the Rolls, sitting with Lindblom and Asplin LJJ. Nicholas Bacon QC and I, appeared for the appellant. The respondent…
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The golden goose
For seven hundred years the common law courts set their faces against strangers to a case financially supporting its litigation by the doctrines of maintenance and champerty. The historical approach to maintenance and champerty was explained by Lord Mustill in Giles v Thompson [1994] 1 AC 142 in these terms: “…the crimes of maintenance and…
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Construing costs management orders
Costs budgeting and costs management has evolved over the last 5 years substantially. Evolution it should be noted is often a bloody process: nature red in tooth and claw, promoting the survival of the fittest, with extinction as the reward for those who fail to survive. Something of this exsanguinary struggle can be observed in…
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Issues based costs orders and part 36
One dilemma that arises from time to time is how a court is to balance the competing considerations which can arise at trial, where a claimant succeeds in beating their own part 36 offer at trial but loses on substantial issues along the way, which in turn have generated significant amounts of costs. In the…
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QOCS and fundamental dishonesty II
Assuming that the issues have been sufficiently telegraphed to the putatively dishonest party, how is fundamental dishonesty to be defined? Perhaps the starting point is to consider the latest formulation of what would be dishonesty in a recent decision of the Supreme Court that of Ivey (Appellant) v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd Crockfords [2017] UKSC 67 where…
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QOCS and fundamental dishonesty
It is sad to say, that fraud is present in a significant number of cases in personal injury litigation. Whether that involves hardened criminals operating in organised gangs to fake accidents and claims, or otherwise ordinary people who feel able to lie that they have sustained whiplash injury when they have not, these cases are…
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If I could turn back time
One of the vagaries of the costs management regime, is that it has to function in the real world where the substantive litigation it is subsidiary too grinds through relentlessly irrespective of when a case may be costs managed and when the court system is capable of listing a costs and case management conference. Even…