Litigation/Dispute Resolution

There is no implied duty of good faith in a solicitor’s retainer, the Court of Appeal has ruled in rejecting an appeal by a law firm trying to recover £3m in fees from a former client.

The High Court has upheld a decision to throw out a negligence claim against a law firm because it was served too late – even though the court had actually lost the claim.

The liaison judge for the Administrative Court in the north has rejected an appeal from an Essex law firm that said it was not “convenient” for a case to be transferred from London to Leeds.

A senior City partner who told a client to “burn” a private messaging app after it was served with a search order has been found guilty of criminal contempt of court.

A professional negligence claim against a firm of solicitors in the North-East has been thrown out as an attempt to relitigate an unsuccessful private prosecution.

The High Court has upheld a decision that a law firm which charged its client nearly $3m under an unenforceable conditional fee agreement has to repay the money.

A High Court judge has criticised City law firm Fieldfisher for its failings in overseeing an e-disclosure exercise where 800,000 documents were missed, leading to a trial being adjourned for two years.

Barristers who win cases on behalf of causes they back should avoid making “supportive” comments or risk undermining their independence, the vice-chair of the Bar Council has warned.

The “explosive growth” of litigation funding is behind an increase in class actions across Europe over the past two years, a report by the law firm CMS has argued.

The Court of Appeal yesterday highlighted the importance of judicial control over costs to ensure that the involvement of third-party litigation funders does not create perverse incentives.

Judges are using Wikipedia to research legal issues and allowing it to influence their reasoning, ground-breaking research has discovered.

The Ministry of Justice’s “future ambition” is to extend compulsory mediation from small claims to all county court users and so it has begun considering its role in overseeing the mediation sector.

A lord justice of appeal who became “unjustifiably antagonised” by a defendant’s “persistence” in challenging his decisions should have recused himself, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Mediation will be made compulsory for all small claims worth up to £10,000, potentially settling 20,000 cases that would otherwise end up in court, the Ministry of Justice proposed today.

The rules on witness statements should not be seen as encouragement to identify “as many instances of non-compliance as possible for use in trench warfare”, the High Court has said.