Court fee remission process
An application for help with fees, that is to avoid paying a court or tribunal fee altogether, or getting a reduction on the normal fee, is made on Form EX160: Apply for help with fees. The process for applying online is: Continue reading
This piece does not deal with court fees themselves, but rather the principles and practices of court fee remissions and recoverability and so on, and the process of seeking remission. Continue reading
This was an appeal bought by Jet 2 Holidays Ltd. The appeal related to an application by the claimant for permission to bring committal proceedings against the defendant for contempt. Karl and Laura Hughes, the defendants, had intimated a claim against Jet 2 Holidays Ltd, the claimants, in relation to holiday sickness. Continue reading
No commercial litigation solicitor bats an eyelid to the principle of a 100% uplift in a conditional fee agreement (CFA). They are taking the risk of losing all their work in progress if the case is unsuccessful and a 100% uplift is just reward. Continue reading
The Court of Appeal has recently delivered a significant judgment in the Privatbank case which touches on a number of interesting points of interpretation relating to the Lugano Convention and the Brussels Recast Regulation. Below, we consider some of the implications of this historic decision. Continue reading
Everyone has played Monopoly and enjoyed the cash bonus for passing GO! How about receiving your cash bonus for failing to comply? Well CPR 45.24 allows you to do just that. Continue reading
Answer: when a claimant, who is a party to “no win no fee” conditional fee agreement (CFA) with his solicitor, dies before a “win” in litigation is achieved. In that eventuality, the “death” clause, which is a feature of most CFAs, takes effect: the CFA is terminated immediately and the solicitor is entitled to claim “basic costs” (as defined) for work undertaken to that date, irrespective of the stage which the litigation has reached. It follows that, although the much trumpeted expression “win or lose the case, it won’t cost you a penny” will be true in the sense that the claimant will pay nothing, that is only because he or she is no more: it will be for the personal representatives to settle the affairs of the deceased claimant out of his or her estate if there are sufficient funds available, for example from the sale of the family home, in order to do so.
Anything electronic has always been controversial and can leave people feeling excluded. Certainly it seems that this is how the vast majority of practitioners feel when looking in on the new electronic bill of costs. Continue reading
A proposed redraft of the much-criticised 2013 regulations governing damages-based agreements (DBAs) has recently been published and has been broadly welcomed by practitioners. The redraft is a joint effort by Professor Rachael Mulheron of QMUL and Nicholas Bacon QC, who were invited by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to conduct an independent review of the 2013 Regulations. This followed the government’s recognition, in its post-implementation review of Part 2 of LASPO, that the current version “would benefit from additional clarity and certainty”, a comment which some may say displays the art of understatement. Continue reading
In Paralel Routs Limited v Fedotov, HHJ Paul Matthews, who was sitting as a judge of the High Court, highlighted the importance and necessity of procedural rules being explained properly. This case involved a defendant, a Russian national, who at the time of trial was in prison in Moscow and did not give live evidence, and another Russian national claiming to have an interest in the claimant’s claim. Continue reading