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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Fixed ideas
Just before my summer break (now rapidly receding into the past) I published an article in Litigation Funding magazine on fixed costs in NIHL claims. A copy of the article, can now be downloaded in PDF format here: Fixed Ideas. Of course, in the last two months the concept of fixed costs in clinical negligence…
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Michaelmas term and WordPress 4.3
Summer holidays are coming to an end and the start of Michaelmas term is now clearly visible on the horizon. Change is in the air and soon it will be time to reach for the crumpets and bramble jelly. It is now nearly 3 years since I started this blog using WordPress and the template…
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Reviewing provisional assessments of costs
I have now undertaken more than two dozen oral hearings, in the aftermath of a provisional assessment, when the paying party tries to make its points of principle, or the receiving party tries to claw something from the wreckage. The rules provide that either party can request an oral hearing up to 21 days after receipt of…
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Fiat justitia ruat caelum ?
The title of this post reflects the Latin maxim “Let justice be done though the heavens fall”, a principle formulated originally by Terence, or Piso and echoed in famous cases in more modern times, by judges as diverse as Lord Mansfield and Judge James Horton in the infamous Scottsboro’ Boys trial in the 1930s. It…
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Statutory construction and the Civil Procedure Rules
In recent weeks, I have had a number of enquiries from frustrated costs lawyers, as to what certain provisions within part 45 actually mean. They are frustrated, because the rules do not appear to cover or explain with certainty, what costs are recoverable in certain scenarios, or because the rules are ambiguous. Such frustrations are not new.…
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NIHL claims and “the compensation culture”
When I started off at the Bar, about 90% of the work that I undertook were personal injury and industrial disease claims. A significant proportion of the latter category of claim involved claims for industrial deafness and tinnitus, now known collectively as NIHL. Over 20 years, I have seen the volume of work flow, and ebb and flow…
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Solicitors and their bills
I have thought increasingly frequently in the last couple of years, about writing a book on solicitor-own client disputes a particularly interesting area of costs work, and uniquely painful for the solicitors who find themselves embroiled in a vulgar dispute with their own client about their fees. Most solicitors never escalate a dispute with their…
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The Aarhus Convention and costs
The case of R versus Environment Agency and others (Number 2) (2013) UK SC 78 is perhaps now the leading case on the application of the Aarhus Convention in domestic law insofar is that convention is concerned with questions of cost. The Aarhus Convention requires that proceedings to which it applies should be “fair, equitable,…