It is a few
months since the Court of Appeal judgement in the case of Mitchell changed the
face of Civil Justice in this country –
Since that judgement
the courts have been swamped with applications. This was predicted by most
commentators. The whole focus has moved from the merits of an individual case
to an obsessive fear of missing deadlines or getting the wording wrong on
documents.
In my
earlier blog I mentioned the case of Romano v k Papers (Blackburn) Ltd where HHJ Gore struck out a claim
where a deadline had been missed by one day in particularly difficult circumstances.
One recent case has highlighted attempts
to take matters to even more ridiculous lengths. In the commercial case of Lakatamia Shipping Co Ltd
v Nobu Su & Ors there was a delay by Defendants, of just 45 minutes in dealing
with disclosure of documents. The claimants took the point and argued that the
case should be struck out. The High Court found in favour of the defendants. The
delay was trivial. Interestingly Hamblen J. found that there was no prejudice
caused by the delay. This could be a some small encouragement as there was no
hint of prejudice in the Romano case. In that case the prejudice was suffered
by the court administration which had to find time to deal with the application
for relief. Presumably the court faced similar issues in the Lakatamia case.
In another recent case - The Bank of Ireland & Anor v Philip Pank
Partnership [2014] EWHC 284, Mr Justice Stuart-Smith has commented
that there a risk in some cases that
‘ …Such a conclusion would, in my
judgment, serve only to bring the rules of procedure and the law generally into
disrepute.’
I would
suggest the damage to our civil justice system has already been done. The world
changed when the Master of the Rolls said in Mitchell –
“There now has
to be a shift away from exclusively focussing on doing justice in the
individual case”.
There is a
real risk that our civil courts are becoming more concerned about dates and
forms than about Justice. Indeed we should then stop calling it a civil justice
system.
Is it too
much to hope for that this decision in Lakatamia suggests a glimmer of sanity?
Maybe
things will begin to settle down. But is certainly a long way back to the real
world. In the meantime the courts will be dealing with more and more satellite hearings
and the cost of litigation will go through the roof.
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