Costs

Parties can agree to contract out of fixed costs, a regional costs judge has ruled. He said it was clear that a recent ruling of the Court of Appeal allowed parties to do this.

A group of senior judges at the helm of the civil courts are considering a review of the guideline hourly rates “as a matter of urgency”, it has emerged.

The High Court has rejected a challenge to the Ministry of Justice’s failure to extend qualified one-way costs shifting to discrimination claims in the county court.

Points of dispute in detailed assessments must help the parties and court “determine precisely what is in dispute and why”, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

An urgently needed amendment to the rules on qualified one-way costs shifting in so-called mixed claims will come into force in the coming weeks, the Civil Procedure Rule Committee has decided.

A circuit judge has made a “highly unusual” and large third-party costs order against a claimant’s medical expert witness, whose “improper, unreasonable, or negligent conduct” doomed the case.

The High Court was wrong not to punish with indemnity costs a couple who pursued speculative claims that reached the “absurd” situation where they racked up costs simply to recover costs.

Membership of the Association of Litigation Funders is not enough reassurance that a funder will pay up in the face of a large liability for costs, the High Court has ruled.

An artificial intelligence-backed “virtual assistant” to augment the work of lawyers in large loss cases is being developed by defendant law firm Keoghs as part of a suite of new tools.

A party that failed to file and serve its costs budget in time because it was not included in a list of agreed pre-case and costs management conference steps has been granted relief from sanctions.