The decision of Cockerill J, sitting as a Commercial Court judge, on 14 September 2021, highlights the importance and operation of conditions precedent in insurance policies, in this instance a public liability policy. An insured’s failure to comply with the notification condition of a policy (treated by the insurers as a condition precedent) was considered in Arch Insurance (UK) Ltd v Philip McCullough.
At the risk of adding to crystal-ball gazing about the post-pandemic legal landscape, it is hard to resist speculating that mediation may ultimately join the list of things that have been available for many years but took the nudge of the pandemic to be embraced widely and come into their own.
A perfect storm of circumstances seems to have converged to provide ideal conditions for mediation and other forms of “alternative” dispute resolution to be finally embedded across the full spectrum of the English civil courts, rather than in the current patchy manner.
In my last Dispute Resolution blog, I looked at the signature requirements for solicitors’ bills, both in relation to between the parties’ costs assessments, and solicitor and own client costs assessments.
In this blog post, I consider the signature requirements relating to:
