Litigation/Dispute Resolution

The disruption caused by Covid last year was not a good enough excuse for a law firm missing a deadline to file amended particulars of claim by four months, the High Court has ruled.

Two clients who owe their solicitors £2.3m in outstanding fees, costs and interest have been committed to prison having been found guilty of 14 charges of contempt of court.

An unregulated law firm is offering businesses a “highly automated” debt recovery service that guarantees debts of up to £5,000 that go to court will be repaid, by the firm if not the debtor.

The Conservative chairman of the justice select committee has spoken out about the problems in the county court, saying civil justice is “nowhere near high enough up the agenda”.

Justice secretary Dominic Raab is “in the market for something quite drastic and bold” to reduce the number of private law family cases in the courts, he said yesterday in a wide-ranging discussion.

Senior judges and lawyers on a panel chaired by former Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger have called for legal reforms to curb ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’ (SLAPPs).

The Master of the Rolls yesterday signalled his intention to revolutionise civil costs and has already set the Civil Justice Council working on a wide-ranging review.

A number of large UK commercial law firms will fall into the hands of US private equity investors next year, the founder of Doorway Capital, which owns national firm Simpson Millar, has predicted.

A master has labelled as “a form of procedural abuse” a bid to bring a data breach claim in the High Court where the “very modest” damages would be dwarfed by costs of £50,000.

The Civil Justice Council has set out a shopping list of potential changes to pre-action protocols (PAPs), including a summary costs procedure and new PAPs.