At the end of July I attended the last of Jackson LJ’s Costs Review Seminars. This seminar focused on detailed assessments and explored various ways to try to improve the process. The majority of those attending were costs draftsmen, costs judges and other costs professionals. What was interesting was the way that some of the […]
Changes to the assessment process Read More »
Lord Justice Jackson’s Preliminary Report on Civil Litigation Costs seriously considers whether the current two-way costs shifting rules should continue. He writes: “The first possible modification would be to introduce one-way cost shifting. One-way cost shifting means that when the defendant loses, he pays the claimant’s costs; when the claimant loses, each side bears its
Jackson Costs Review – Part 3 – Cost Shifting Read More »
Lord Justice Jackson’s Preliminary Report on Civil Litigation Costs was published on 8 May 2009. I did not immediately rush to comment on this report for three reasons: The Report runs to almost 700 pages plus appendices and takes some reading. Given the importance of this report to the future of the legal costs system
Jackson Costs Review – Part 1 – Introduction Read More »
The heart of the problem concerning ATE premium levels was identified recently by Paul Ashurst writing in the New Law Journal: "one party buys insurance cover without handing over any cash and then hands the bill to the other party, who has no say in selecting either the cost or provider". The self-insuring deferred premium,
ATE premiums – What impact market forces? Read More »
As anticipated, the new RTA claims process will not be ready by the original date of October 2009 due to problems agreeing how the scheme will work. A new date of April 2010 has now been set. This latest news coincides with Lord Justice Jackson’s recent comments commending the German costs recovery model. With his
New claims process stumbles Read More »
The Sunday Times followed on from last week’s attack on the costs paid out in clinical negligence cases (see previous blog) with a Top 10 list of the firms who were paid the most by the NHSLA in 2007/08: Irwin Mitchell £10.75m Leigh Day £4.87m Pannone LLP £4.83m McMillan Williams £3.01m Kingsley Napley £2.96m Gadsby
The law firms costing NHS millions Read More »
In a previous post I commented on the fact that Cook on Costs 2009 is wrong when it says: "With the removal of the [CFA] Regulations [2000] from 1 November 2005 a CFA needs only to be in writing and signed…". As confirmed by Senior Costs Judge Master Hurst, in Findley v Jones and MIB
Signatures to CFAs Read More »
The Ministry of Justice has issued a consultation paper, Civil Court Fees 2008, on proposed increases in certain court fees (closing date 4/3/09). The most eye watering increase is the fee for filing a request for a detailed assessment hearing by a legally aided party where no other party is ordered to pay the costs
Proposed court fee increases Read More »
One of the more unfortunate costs provisions in the CPR is the general presumption that the receiving party is entitled to the costs of the detailed assessment proceedings. This encourages some receiving parties to submit inflated and unrealistic bills and, unless the paying party makes an offer that they consider puts them at real risk,
Offers to settle costs Read More »
