British civil law: the best in the world? Or due a costs shake-up?

March 25, 2010

We deviate, albeit briefly, from mulling over whether the UK should have a written constitution to note an interesting piece in today’s Times by Alex Wade.

Wade, a lawyer turned writer, still keeps his hand in with the law but is usually associated with defendant pre-publication advice. As a writer, he pops up rather like the ubiquitous Mark Stephens, covering just about everything under the sun. Boxing, surfing, travel writing, football, art and – once a lawyer, always a lawyer – the law seem to be his preferred topics. In today’s Times piece, he takes a somewhat unexpected view of the Jackson Report on costs in civil litigation. Or rather, Wade does not take a view, but instead presents a balanced account of the claimant case, something with which he is not usually associated (the claimant case that is, not a balanced account – we believe Wade when he says that his hot-headed days are over).

The claimant case is, though, an interesting one. As some of the lawyers quoted in Wade’s piece suggest, the implementation of Jackson’s proposals could serve to hinder rather than facilitate justice. The proposals have arrived from good intentions, motivated by the desire to curb excessive fees in defamation and privacy cases, but tinkering with success fees under Conditional Fee Arrangements and abolishing After the Event insurance, when applied to the commercial arena, would appear to have the potential to preclude a significant number of people from going to law.

Anecdotally, we learn of significant disquiet about Jackson’s proposals among the legal profession – to the extent that even defendant lawyers are not sure about them. We’d be interested in comments on this, though we ourselves are not so sure about the words of a legal insurance underwriter, who wished to remain anonymous, who contacted us having read Wade’s Times article: “British courts are the best in the world. That they are is good for the economy. Why make it so difficult to sue people? Don’t we want to have the best courts in the world?”

We’re not convinced that this line of analysis is correct, but it makes for an interesting question: is having a highly developed civil litigation system good for the economy? Or just for the lawyers involved?

 

One Response to “British civil law: the best in the world? Or due a costs shake-up?”

Posted by:
johnson tony on June 4, 2010 at 3:40 am

Ive been to the UK….n i was impressed to see the British law…..its very well organized….kudos
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Tony Johnson

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
scissors

The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.