Costs

The Supreme Court is to review a controversial ruling that a law firm handling uncontested flight delay claims was not conducting litigation and so did not have an equitable lien over the compensation.

The High Court has ordered the wife and mother-in-law of a Kazakh businessman, the subject of a “very substantial fraud claim”, to pay the claimants’ costs bill of over £12m.

Litigants in person who “do little to promote their cases until they are absolutely forced to” and do not “understand, let alone research” their obligations can still be regarded as acting reasonably.

The Association of Costs Lawyers has reopened its training scheme for the first time in three years, while also making it more straightforward for lawyers to gain the costs lawyer qualification.

A defendant who settles a claim that leaves the RTA protocol with a part 36 offer including the usual wording about paying costs on the standard basis is not contracting out of fixed costs, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

A costs budget decision that said simply “instruction of leading counsel is not approved” without explaining further was sufficient in the circumstances, the High Court has ruled.

A circuit judge was wrong to find that an employer’s liability claim automatically exited the protocol because the defendent challenged the late service of evidence at the stage 3 hearing, the appeal court has ruled.

The absence of rehabilitation from the new whiplash regime risks “unintended and ill-considered consequences”, a group of leading rehabilitation and medical reporting organisations has warned.

Employers paying for an employee’s to speak to a lawyer about settling a dismissal dispute need to stump up significantly more than £500 for proper legal advice, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled.

The Supreme Court has overturned a ruling by the Court of Appeal that the only limit on the court’s discretion to make third-party costs orders against insurers was that it must be exercised justly.