The free guide to costs, funding and the Jackson reforms
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The impact of technology on PI law
New technology is rapidly changing the world around us, permanently revolutionising our everyday lives. It is also changing the legal landscape, with law practitioners required to keep abreast of every new development to best help their clients. From helmet and dash cameras to improved CCTV, this is particularly evident in personal injury law.
QOCS and multiple defendants – why both sides need to be wary
The recent case of Cartwright v Venduct Engineering Limited [2018] EWCA Civ 1654 represents a very interesting development in the interpretation of rule 44.14. The question before the Court of Appeal was this: where, in a matter to which QOCS applies, a claimant has brought an action against multiple defendants, is a successful defendant entitled to enforce a costs award in its favour against damages recovered by the claimant from an unsuccessful defendant?
The case for costs management in arbitration
Way back in May this year, when the grass was still green and some people in London could be spotted wearing two layers of clothing, Sir Rupert Jackson popped over to Mauritius and delivered the keynote speech at the 11th International Conference on Construction Law and ADR. The closing section of his speech brought him back to familiar territory and noted that 67% of respondents to a Queen Mary University review this year identified the high level of costs as the worst feature of international arbitration. So, what’s to be gained by encouraging the introduction of pre-emptive budgeting to arbitral proceedings?
The impact of reform on PI and clin neg lawyers
With the Civil Liability Bill generating further turbulence in the legal market, Allianz Legal Protection hosted a local roundtable with solicitors in the Bristol area to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the personal injury and clinical negligence market. Over the course of two hours, the conversation focused on both customers and the profession, beginning with talk of a hidden agenda questioning whether honest customers should receive compensation for minor injuries.
The trouble with the debt recovery PAP
As a lawyer specialising in debt recovery, I believe it was perfectly acceptable and reasonable for a pre-action protocol (PAP) to be introduced to the debt collection process prior to court action. The vulnerable should certainly be protected, and the PAP goes some way towards addressing this. But I don’t believe that it was within the original brief of the PAP that a large segment of the commercial ledgers in the UK would be included.
A golden opportunity for the ATE market to innovate
With the key judgement in the BNM v MGN case not expected until the end of the year, and decisions in the fixed recoverable costs arena not due until 2019, the after-the-event (ATE) insurance sector – already burdened by ever-changing regulation – is playing something of a waiting game. But this could be a golden opportunity for the ATE sector – the chance to take advantage of what might otherwise be a relative lull in activity period to set in motion a time of self-analysis and transformation, to develop plans for what the future of ATE insurance will look like.
Litigants in person and legal expenses insurance
This article could have been headed ‘The implications of the Barton v Wright Hassall case for LEI’ – and that case is certainly my inspiration. However, the subject has a broader reach than that individual case, thanks to the government’s proposed increase in the small claims court threshold from £1,000 to £5,000 for road traffic accident claims and £2,000 for all other personal injury claims.
Reforming procedures for expert evidence in clinical negligence claims
I am delighted have been asked to sit on the core group of industry experts called together by the Civil Justice Council to develop a bespoke process for clinical negligence claims where legal costs can be fixed, for damages claims up to a value of £25,000. It is, of course, not going to be an easy process, but is certainly more achievable than the previous suggestion of Lord Justice Jackson that fixed costs could be applied to all claims up to a value of £250,000.
Evading enforcement by any means necessary
After 22 years, Mr and Mrs Akhmedov’s marriage came to an end in 2015. This was a marriage like few others, resulting in two children and building up vast wealth, including a plane, a helicopter and a 115m-long super yacht called Luna. Regrettably, the divorce was bitter. Mr Akhmedov fought hard and dirty to avoid having to share any of the family wealth with his wife. The English High Court found that he hid assets in a Bermuda trust with the intention of evading his legal obligations to his wife and even went so far as to invent stories that they had already divorced in Russia, producing forged documents to the court as ‘evidence’.
Football’s financial fouls
As you settle down to watch the action on the field during the World Cup, bear in mind that you will be watching players who, together, are valued at billions of pounds. And whose professional careers are matters of hugely valuable commercial interest to the intermediaries supposed to look after them. Brown bags of money might not change hands at motorway service stations anymore, but transfer disputes involving agents are often the subject of litigation in the courts or, more frequently, in arbitrations. We know because we often insure them.
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