REUTERS | Mike Blake
January 10, 2019

“Old style” CFAs: the last hurrah for success fees?

It is almost six years since section 44 of the Legal Aid (Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders) Act 2012 (LASPO) was enacted on 1 April 2013, under which success fees in conditional fee agreements (CFAs) and after-the-event (ATE) insurance premiums ceased to be recoverable from opponents in most types of litigation. Exceptions were carved out which applied to mesothelioma claims (and still do), insolvency cases (until April 2016) and privacy (under sentence of death from 6 April 2019). Transitional provisions, however, left untouched CFAs made and ATE premiums taken out on or before 31 March 2013 (see CPR 48.1-2), and by now, it might be expected that all issues with funding arrangements of this type would long since have been resolved. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Randall Hill
January 4, 2019

It ain’t necessarily so: identifying reliable evidence in the light of Burgess v Lejonvarn

All lawyers know that a thing is not necessarily true because a client or a witness says it. To advise a client, involved in a dispute where there is a conflict of evidence on important issues, we need to know how judges will resolve this conflict. How do they decide which witness is honest and which dishonest, which is reliable and which unreliable? The guidance from the courts has been consistent. The contemporary documentation, such as letters, minutes or notes, written well before there was any breath of dispute between the parties, is of crucial importance. The trial judge will also consider the admitted facts and the overall probabilities. The recent decision in Burgess v Lejonvarn illustrates the application of these rules. Continue reading →