In WH Holding Ltd v E20 Stadium LLP, the Court of Appeal rejected a claim to litigation privilege in respect of emails between a company’s board members discussing a commercial proposal for the settlement of a dispute. Continue reading
REUTERS | Clodagh Kilcoyne
January 15, 2019
Discussing settlement options: minding the gap between litigation privilege and the without prejudice rule
REUTERS | Stefan Wermuth
January 14, 2019
Defendants bringing an additional claim: fortune favours the brave?
Brief facts
The case of Dubad v Gans & Co Solicitors LLP and another involves an initial claim made against a bus driver’s employers. The claimant, Mr Dubad, had suffered serious injuries after a collision with a bus. Continue reading
REUTERS | Russell Cheyne
I am a barrister, specialising mainly in personal injury and clinical negligence work. This is split between claimants and defendants, in roughly equal proportions. This piece is about my perception of a changing culture in the approach to agreement or assessment of the receiving parties’ costs in such cases, normally now only in relation to claimants’ costs, because of qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS). To me, this change is most obviously marked (whatever its causes may be) by the fact that counsel are now regularly being asked by their solicitors, or the latter’s costs lawyers / draftsmen, to forego significant parts of the fees, even before any challenge has been raised to them by the paying party (and often without any suggestion as to why this may be justified), simply in order to facilitate agreement of an overall discount, and therefore to avoid those costs being sent for detailed assessment. Continue reading