News

The Civil Justice Council has set out detailed changes it believes should be made to the Civil Procedure Rules to help vulnerable parties and witnesses, including an amended overriding objective.

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.

Parties under-estimating the time required to argue applications in the Commercial Court – especially where the parties seek a Friday listing – is a “significant current problem”, a judge has warned.

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.

Parties that try to use the disclosure pilot for litigation advantage will face “serious adverse costs consequences”, the Chancellor of the High Court has warned, urging judges to take action if they see it.

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 Commercial Court has pledged to try and eliminate listing issues that have occurred in the past year amid a reduction in the number of available judges.