A new year. A time to plan for the year ahead, and set the agenda for work to be done. Andrea Dowsett, Assistant Secretary to the CJC, has provided us with the following fascinating insight into some of the CJC’s key initiatives on the cards for 2016, which demonstrates the huge breadth of its work.
Andrea Dowsett:
“Much of the work of the CJC continues to centre around the in-depth investigations of its different specialist working groups. Latterly, these groups have been set up with specific aims, with a particular remit (usually, after discussion and consultation, the production of a report) and for a certain period of time.
Fixed recoverable costs for noise-induced hearing loss cases
One such group set up this year, under the chairmanship of Andrew Parker, has been a working group on the management of claims for noise-induced hearing loss, and the way in which a system of fixed recoverable costs might work for such cases. The impetus for the group came from a letter from Lord Faulks at the MoJ, asking the CJC to look into the subject, and the substance of that letter has been more or less reproduced in the terms of reference for the group.
As always, a balanced membership has been key in an area likely to have two distinct viewpoints. Though (again as frequently happens), discussions at the first few meetings of the group have been constructive and fruitful, with much common ground and agreement found in the current blockages to the smooth progress of these claims, and some agreement on the ways in which a system of good practice might overcome those blockages. For example, discussion has focussed on the provision of employment records by HMRC and whether there are circumstances in which they are not required; and the degree of detail required at an early stage by the defendants in such cases to allow them to reach an early conclusion on the question of breach, a subject that necessarily centres largely around the early provision of medical information.
The first stage of the group’s work will be the subject of a report to the January 2016 meeting of the CJC, after which the group will move onto the second (and more contentious) subject of the structure and substance of any system of FRC.
Litigants in person
Litigants in person have always featured high on the list of the Council’s priorities – and are one of the few standing working groups through which the Council conducts its work. The fourth in the CJC’s series of National Forums on the subject of access to justice for LIPs was held in early December 2015, and included a wide range of delegates (from the judiciary, Government, the advice and voluntary sectors and academia, among others) and lively and informative discussion. The focus this year’s Forum was on the ways of building a strategic approach to providing information and guidance for LIPs. As one delegate put it, how to offer more than “just a collection of co-ordinated offerings”. The Forum benefited from an early address by the Master of the Rolls and Lord Faulks and short talks and panel input by people such as Dominic Grieve, Professor Richard Susskind, and Ryder and Briggs LJJ. The whole event was ably facilitated as in previous years by Mr Justice Robin Knowles. A summary of the discussion at the Forum will be published on the CJC’s website shortly.
Streamlining the resolution of property disputes
The CJC is grateful to Siobhan McGrath, the President of the Property Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, for bringing her considerable and detailed understanding of property law and litigation to chairing another working group, this time on ways of streamlining the procedure of the courts and tribunals in the resolution of cases in the broad area of landlord and tenant, property and housing law. The group is particularly keen to remove the need, as far as possible, for litigants to go to more than one court or tribunal in the course of resolving their dispute. Its particular focus has been on the work of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) and its overlap with the county court and any associated dispute resolution schemes – and the need for a reconsideration of jurisdictions that have often developed in a piecemeal fashion.
This group will report to the CJC in April 2016. The work has an obvious overlap with that of Lord Justice Briggs in his consideration of the structure of the civil court system, and it is hoped will feed into that.
Boundary disputes
Finally, early in 2016, the CJC plans to start looking at boundary disputes and whether some good practice guidance or a pre-action protocol might help the smoother process of these notoriously difficult and emotional cases. That group will be chaired by DJ William Jackson, and decisions will be made on the membership and terms of reference of that group early in the new year.”
