REUTERS | Zoran Milich
June 9, 2017

Leaving us hanging: what dispute resolution practitioners can expect following the General Election 2017

Surprised? Why? Surely you should have seen something unexpected coming. After all, it was only a matter of months ago that the USA delivered a shock result: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway wrongly declared that La La Land had won the Academy Award for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. Now we must reflect in the Moonlight for what the UK General Election 2017 means for dispute resolution practitioners. In spite of the otherwise uncertain result, there are a number of things we can probably expect. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Toby Melville
June 8, 2017

Legal aid and CFAs: uncomfortable bedfellows? A view about Hyde v Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Trust

The legal maxim “hard cases make bad law” is attributed to US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes and has proved to be every bit as durable as its author (Holmes fought for the North in the American Civil War and retired from the bench 70 years later in 1932 aged 90!). In Hyde v Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Trust, Davis LJ referred to it when giving the judgment of the court: having commented that the NHS Trust’s case could “… scarcely appeal to any sense of the merits”, he declined to accept the outcome urged on him by its counsel, that to dismiss the NHS Trust’s appeal would be to make bad law simply because its case was “hard” (as in distinctly unattractive). Continue reading →