From 4 May 2017 insurers have been under a duty to pay valid insurance claims within a reasonable time. If they fail to comply, they may be liable to pay damages to an insured who has suffered additional losses as a result of the delay in payment. This obligation only applies to insurance and reinsurance contracts taken out, varied or renewed from 4 May 2017. Continue reading
This time two years ago, having listened to Lord Neuberger’s speech on the future of mediation at the Civil Mediation Council’s (CMC) annual conference, I wrote about whether we may see some form of compulsory mediation scheme sooner, rather than later. Two years on and I wonder, are we really any closer to that than we were in May 2015? Continue reading
The introduction of cost budget discussion reports appears to have given rise to a new area of tactical game playing by litigators. Coulson J has issued a stern warning to parties who seek to engage in such games by putting forward unrealistically low figures for the opposing party’s costs and, in a recent case, wholly disregarded a defendant’s budget discussion report because it was considered unrealistically low. Continue reading