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Jeremy Andrews and Giles Hutt look at the latest proposals for disclosure reform ‘A party can seek to overwhelm its opponent with disclosure, making it more difficult for them to find the few documents that make a real difference to their case.’ Disclosure reform is not new. Lord Woolf attempted it in the 1990s, when …
Continue reading "Disclosure: Forcing change"
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Andrew Beck and Gwendoline Davies take an overview of remedies for commercial fraud, deceit and bribery ‘While there may be circumstances in which it is necessary to plead fraud, parties should be mindful of the possibility that other types of claim may deliver the results they are looking for.’ Civil cases of fraud, deceit and …
Continue reading "Fraud: The whole truth and anything but the truth"
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Tom Whittaker weighs up the judicial scrutiny of contractual discretion ‘Historically, the court has required only that the relevant decision be made without arbitrariness, capriciousness and irrationality. More recent cases, however, suggest that the court may also require that the decision be reasonable.’ Contracts often confer obligations to make decisions, exercise discretion or form opinions …
Continue reading "Contract: Making your mind up"
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Adele Ashton and Jeremy Clarke-Williams examine the ‘serious harm’ test in defamation claims ‘Since the Defamation Act came into force, practitioners and judges alike have been wrestling with the question of what amounts to ‘‘serious harm’’ to a claimant’s reputation.’ The reputation of a business can be a crucial factor in its success. With the …
Continue reading "Reputation Management: Lachaux must go on"
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Clare Arthurs and Nicole Finlayson report on recent citations of Wood v Capita ‘Both these cases illustrate in practice the approach set out in Wood of employing the tools of textualism and contextualism together, seeking a balance between the literal meaning of the words and their context to arrive at the correct interpretation.’ Earlier this …
Continue reading "Insights By Penningtons Manches: Roll with it – contractual interpretation"
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Richard Marshall, Clare Arthurs and Nicole Finlayson look at Jackson LJ’s recent report ‘If we want to avoid wholescale fixed recoverable costs, we need to keep working with the costs management process, and engage with the other proposals that Jackson LJ sets out.’ On 21 July 2017, Jackson LJ published that essential summertime reading, his …
Continue reading "Insights By Penningtons Manches: Costs crusade"
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Fiona Simpson examines the merits of the Shorter Trials Scheme ‘The Shorter Trials Scheme (STS) will not usually be suitable for cases involving allegations of fraud/dishonesty, requiring extensive disclosure and/or reliance on extensive witness/expert evidence, or involving multiple issues/parties.’ In September 2015 the Shorter Trials Scheme (STS) was introduced to run as a pilot from …
Continue reading "Reform: Size matters"
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Sarah McCann reports on a recent application for relief from sanctions ‘At least insofar as the breach relates to costs budgeting, the emphasis appears to be squarely on considering the just outcome in all the circumstances.’ Much has been written about the court’s discretion to grant relief from sanctions pursuant to CPR 3.9 over recent …
Continue reading "Practice: Don’t be late"
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Gwendoline Davies and Claire Acklam make sense of the rules and recent case law on proportionality of costs ‘Even if costs are reasonable this does not mean that they will necessarily be proportionate. The court must identify which of the factors listed in CPR 44.3(5) are relevant to the case and relate them to a …
Continue reading "Costs: Keep it in proportion"
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Tom Snelling and Lauma Skruzmane continue their examination of litigation after Brexit ‘It is inevitable that uncertainty will arise before the courts of England and Wales because it is not clear when exactly the applicable legal regime for choice of court clauses will change.’ In our previous article (‘Climb every mountain’, CLJ74), we examined how …
Continue reading "Brexit: Courting Europe"
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