As the New Year starts and everyone goes back to work, thoughts will inevitably turn to how lawyers should deal with the new rules which came into force last year. Actually, I have decided that I should no longer refer to them as the “new” rules. The civil justice reforms have been in effect since… Read More »
Millnet sees a wide variety of cases during a year and deals with literally hundreds of lawyers. Of course, every case is different but occasionally a case really stands out as worthy of comment either by its subject matter or the problems disclosed. Confidentiality forbids identification of the case and the naming of names, but we were instructed recently… Read More »
I would love to be a fly on the wall the next time Sir Rupert Jackson is asked for his reaction to the latest consideration of his reforms by the Court of Appeal in Andrew Mitchell MP v News Group Newspapers Limited [2013] EWCA Civ 1537. Last week the Court of Appeal dismissed Mr Mitchell’s… Read More »
Richard Nixon was President of the United States from 1969 until he resigned in disgrace after Watergate in 1974. Before that, he was the unsuccessful candidate in the 1960 presidential election which brought John F Kennedy to the White House, and I recall that this poster of an unshaven and rather sinister looking “Tricky Dicky” contributed… Read More »
American friends of mine emailed from sunny Washington the other day to complain (if that is the right word) that they had been living and working in the UK for a number of years and that it was only after they left to go back to the US that we in England had what you might call… Read More »
It is a reasonably sound bet that when former Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, attempted to leave Downing Street with his bicycle, he never expected to be forging new law a few months later. The story is, of course, well known. When trying to leave via the security gates, Mitchell became embroiled in an argument with… Read More »
It is said that “Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” But before you acquire the lazy habit which leads to respectability, you may want to get up to speed with the developments piling up now before everyone departs for the beach. If you are as miffed as J K Rowling is… Read More »
In the flurry of articles and general excitement over the introduction of the Jackson reforms, I appear to have overlooked a case which was decided by Mr Justice Coulson sitting in the Technology and Construction Court in March this year. Although the hearing took place on March 27th, the judgment in Murray and Stokes v Neil Dowlman… Read More »
I am an avid reader of the Sunday broadsheets. Try as I might, I cannot bring myself to read them electronically. The enjoyment gained from a stack of newsprint on a Sunday morning outweighs the irritationof the newsprint coming off on my fingers particularly when there is nothing better to do but eat my poached… Read More »
In 1848, a certain John Russell Bartlett published a Dictionary of Americanisms. Mr Bartlett has it that the phrase slick as a whistle is “a proverbial simile, in common use throughout the United States. To do anything as slick as a whistle, is to do it very smoothly, perfectly, adroitly.” Possibly because I do not… Read More »