Litigation/Dispute Resolution

Case management backed by artificial intelligence could make the courts more accessible, the president of the Supreme Court has said.

A struck-off solicitor still advising clients on legal matters has failed to obtain an injunction to compel a bank to unfreeze his account over questionable payments he received from abroad.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling yesterday that judges can order parties to engage in ADR heralds “a new era of positive change”, one of the intervenors in the case has declared.

It was “not fair” for the defendant in a personal injury claim to only challenge the claimant’s expert evidence during its closing submissions, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

Courts can order parties to engage in alternative dispute resolution, so long as it does not restrict their ability to proceed to a judicial hearing, the Court of Appeal ruled today.

Libel law firms continue to mislead journalists and others that their letters cannot be published and the SRA needs to act, high-profile tax lawyer Dan Neidle said yesterday.

The number and “shamelessness” of SLAPPs has grown but there has been no disciplinary action against the lawyers responsible for how they are run, a major conference heard yesterday.

Costs lawyers have had a good year, with a healthy proportion reporting growth in excess of 10% and many bullish about the impact of more fixed costs, according to their representative body.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has approved a litigation funding agreement that was amended to take account of the Supreme Court ruling in PACCAR.

A judge has penalised a claimant for submitting an “unrealistic” costs budget, saying he hoped it would encourage parties to negotiate them before reaching court.

The Ministry of Justice yesterday published the Arbitration Bill, including a new statutory duty on arbitrators to disclose anything which might give rise to “justifiable doubts” about their impartiality.

The High Court has criticised a leading private prosecutions law firm for the information it provided to persuade a judge to issue summonses alleging fraud against three people.

The High Court has made cross-examination and disclosure orders to enforce a consent order made in the wake of a nine-year dispute between solicitors over the winding down of their law firm.

The Master of the Rolls today publicly accepted the recommendations of the Civil Justice Council’s costs review, starting with an increase in the guideline hourly rates in January.

A Commercial Court judge has blamed a claimant “in large part” for the “wholly unacceptable” last-minute adjournment of their case after he had begun pre-reading for it.