It happened to me again this morning! You will all be familiar with the scenario. You wait in the cold for many minutes for the one bus which will take you to your destination and having got thoroughly miserable and frustrated, not one but two buses turn up together. It seems like that in the… Read More »
In a judgement dated 26th January 2010 and running to more than 500 pages [BSkyb Ltd & Anor v HP Enterprise Services UK Ltd & Anor (Rev 1) [2010] EWHC 86 (TCC) (26 January 2010)] Mr Justice Ramsey accepted one of the five main claims by BSkyB against EDS in their long running dispute. As… Read More »
Ingenuity is the most remarkable human trait. Without it, we would not have discovered how to make fire, how to fashion tools and how to manufacture things useful to our everyday lives. We learned to stand on our hind legs which made life easier for our ancestors. We can also invent things which make our… Read More »
A recent US case of a law firm suing a client contains a salutary lesson. Debevoise & Plimpton had sued former client Candlewood for $6million in unpaid legal fees and found itself facing “an answer and counterclaim” seeking damages of $55million! [Ex-Debevoise Client Raises Nasty Counterclaims in Unpaid Bills Case, The American Lawyer, 14 January,… Read More »
Two matters caught my eye last weekend which I would like to share with readers of this blog. The first was the announcement that former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on January 29th 2010. In particular, the former PM will face questions about his government’s use of intelligence which… Read More »
Key recommendations from the Review of Civil Litigation Costs Final Report of Lord Justice Jackson, published 14th January, 2010 A resumé of the key recommendations may be found on page 463 of the 584 page report [click here to view the report in PDF format]. However, here is a selection of the most important ones: Success… Read More »
Gang aft agley? The last three words of this quotation from To A Mouse by Robert Burns may be better known in the Anglicised version of “often go awry”, but the point is clear. The poem is also widely known for its first line describing the mouse as the “wee sleeket cowrin’ tim’rous beastie” but events… Read More »
Latin phrases used to be an important part of a lawyer’s armoury, if only to confuse those without a classical education into believing that a mundane set of words must be important because of the solemnity with which they were intoned. Doubtless this also justified instructing a lawyer and a fee as the ordinary person… Read More »
A recent article in the Economist [Ungreasing the Wheels, 19th November] caught my eye. The article confirms what we have been seeing in cases referred to us over the past few months, namely that the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is providing litigation lawyers with a staggering amount of work. For those of you not… Read More »
Continuing last month’s seasonal theme (Mirror, mirror on the wall 19th November), I was delighted to see that there is a website dedicated to all things panto called www.its-behind-you.com Fairy godmothers and magic lamps do not feature much, I suspect, in the setting up of vehicles to provide outside funding to litigants who cannot afford to fund… Read More »