New disclosure regime “set to cause problems” for professional negligence claims
Professional negligence claims will become harder to handle under the new approach to disclosure which will be piloted later this year in the Business & Property Courts, particularly for defendants, a barrister has warned. She identified front-loading of costs, imbalance between the parties, and disclosure of adverse documents as potential problems.
High Court rejects non-party litigation privilege claim
An attempt to claim litigation privilege by global mining and commodities giant Glencore, in a case where it was not the party to proceedings, has been rejected by the High Court. It said there was no authority for the proposition that “a person controlling litigation can assert litigation privilege against a party which it is controlling and who is the party to the proceedings”.
High Court orders manual document search in $65m damages claim after concerns over computer review
A High Court judge has ordered a manual search of tens of thousands of documents in a $65m breach of warranty case because of concerns over the claimants’ approach to computer-assisted review. Mr Justice Coulson said disclosure had been “something of a running sore in this case”.
Judiciary signals major culture and rule change to control disclosure
A “wholesale cultural change” in the approach to disclosure in the Business and Property Courts is needed, a judiciary-led working group has said, which will be brought about by a completely new rule and guidelines applying to the majority of cases. These will be tested in a two-year pilot to run in major courts across the country.
Court orders injunction against party that sought to use privileged document disclosed by error
The High Court has granted an injunction against a party that was well aware that a document it was using was a privileged letter accidentally disclosed by the other side. The claimant was advised by a non-solicitor insolvency specialist, but the court said the test was whether it was obvious to a reasonable solicitor that a mistake had been made.
Litigators evenly split on impact of Brexit
Litigation lawyers in London are fairly evenly split on whether Brexit will lead to a “significant flight of work” to other jurisdictions, a survey has found. The survey underlined the strength of opposition from commercial lawyers to fixed costs. Lord Justice Jackson is to publish his report on the issue this morning.
Jackson urges solicitors to sort out accidental disclosure of privileged material between themselves
Litigators should sort out the inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents in a grown-up manner without taking up the time of the court, the Court of Appeal has ruled as it granted an order to delete a privileged email that had been accidentally handed over.
Not so great at defence – MoD loses case after disclosure failure
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has had its defence to a multi-million pound personal injury claim struck out by the High Court for failing to comply with an unless order over its disclosure obligations. The judge said that “unless orders should mean what they say”.
