Welcome to a quick round up of relevant costs related news articles from around the country.
This week we read with interest Barrister Gordon Exall’s piece on the recovery of insurance premiums in clinical negligence cases – offering 10 key points. He contributes a second piece on costs budgets in a face book defamation claim which refers to the case of Stocker and Stocker and provides a useful, and important, example of the practical implementation of cost budgeting in practice.
Litigation Futures highlights interesting statistics on access to justice claiming that government figures show the number of unrepresented parties in County Courts grows while Commercial Court cases fall and the number of defended non-family county court cases where both parties had legal representation fell in 2014.
Elsewhere the Court of Appeal has now been asked to rule on the issue of which fixed costs apply in portal ‘drop-out’ cases when they settle before trial. There have been several conflicting first instance decisions and clarity is sought. You can read more here.
Legal Aid news confirms the role out of bulk upload in the client and case management system (CCMS) on 17th June.
This is a positive step and further information about the benefits of this facility can be found here. If you require any assistance in implementing this new development please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@johnmhayes.co.uk.
Whilst writing we can report today that the date for mandatory compliance with CCMS has been postponed again to 1st February 2016.
Meanwhile the Government through Justice Minister Lord Faulks has announced that there will be no immediate review of civil legal aid cuts but there will be a “systematic review of the changes made with LASPO but not until 2018.
“All the ministers in the Ministry of Justice are wedded to the rule of law and to access to justice…” said Lord Faulks “…but the question that arises out of social welfare law is whether it is always necessary for everybody who has quite real problems to have a lawyer at £200-odd-an-hour, or whether there are better and more effective ways of giving advice.’
Yes, £200 – odd – an – hour. It’s quite astonishing that the Minister of State for Civil Justice and Legal Policy could overstate publicly funded lawyers’ typical remuneration by a factor of about 300%.
And finally, don’t forget that the Government has also issued new guidelines for exceptional funding which you can read here
Our free educational training seminars on troubleshooting CCMS move on to Oxford and the South East for July. For a full listing of dates and venues click here
We hope to see you there.