The Guideline Hourly Rates changed on 1st January 2026. These are set out below. The 2025 and 2024 rates can be found underneath. Guideline hourly rates 2026 (with previous year’s rates in brackets) Grade Fee Earner London 1 London 2…
This section looks at decisions in relation to relief from sanctions and the general principles of CPR 3.9. Often there are links to the decisions themselves, together with links to posts on this blog. CASES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER May 2026…
When the opportunity arises it is helpful to look at cases where costs are summarily assessed. We have three examples here. There are another two cases where the Tribunal expressed surprise at the size of the bills involved. “The first…
A post yesterday looked at two cases where attempts were made to attribute some blame to a litigant’s opponents for not spotting certain issues arising from that litigant’s own conduct. Here we look at a case where this type of…
In this case the judge considered the question of whether a Part 36 offer that was withdrawn after trial should have any impact on the award of costs. The judge held that it should. If the claimants had accepted they…
We are looking at an argument deployed in a case we considered earlier today. It was an argument that the defendants should have been able to “divine” from the oblique nature of the claimant’s evidence that funding was not in…
It goes without saying that this is a decision that must be music to the defendants’ ears. Not only was the claim dismissed the claimant was ordered to pay costs on an indemnity basis for a large part of the…
Earlier this week we looked at a case where a judge allowed the claimants’ application for an order that one of the witnesses they had called be declared a “hostile witness”. This meant that the claimants could then cross-examine their…
Here we look at a case where a solicitor’s (former) client argued that the wording of a covering letter enclosing the firm’s terms and conditions meant that they were estopped from relying on those terms. It is an interesting example…
Here we look at an unusual application for judicial review. It is all about the powers of the County Court to refer matters, upon issue, to the judge for consider. It makes clear that court staff have no power to…
This judgment considers whether certain, admitted, failures by the claimant to give full and frank disclosure should lead to costs being awarded against it, even though it defeated the defendants’ application to set aside the order that was made. The…
One of the issues in this case related to whether a solicitor’s contractual cap of £3 million was reasonable. The solicitor’s terms of business limited liability to £3 million. Could that cap, on the facts of this case, survive the…
We are looking at a judgment that has already received major attention from the media. A number of prominent people brought a civil action against Associated Newspapers. The judge found that they were all honest witnesses. However honesty did not…
There are significant changes to court fees coming into force today. Some 170 fees have increased in line with inflation. Four sets of fees have been reduced to reflect reductions in their underlying costs. In addition there are new probate fees,…
All cases of hallucinated cases are serious, however some may be more serious than others. If we have a situation where the Crown Prosecution Service files documents which rely on cases that simply do not exist, this has to be…
We looked at a case last week which was a “second action” against the same defendants. It was struck out on several grounds, one of which was under CPR 38.7. It is worthwhile looking at the rule in detail …
The Court considered a “Mazur” type argument in this application for permission to appeal. The appellant arguing that the claimant had never been lawfully represented at previous hearings. This argument did not get very far. The judge indicated that, even…
Here we look at what can only be described as a “very late” application to amend a defence. It was made on the morning of the first day of trial. Surprisingly there was no explanation as to why an application…
We are going back to July 2018 where the High Court overturned a first instance decision in favour of a claimant on a service of the claim form issue. The judgment is particularly important because the first-instance judgment appeared to…
DG Calculators is an online suite of professional legal calculators, built by David Green, a barrister at 12 King’s Bench Walk. There is a 14 day free trial period. (CLB members have a discount – see the link below). …
This case considers the issue of whether it was appropriate to make a non-party costs order. The Master reached a clear conclusion that it was. The individual in question was effectively the driving force behind the litigation in addition to…
The section on the use of AI in the latest edition of The Technology and Construction Court Guide is relatively short. However it is significant. It shows that the courts recognise that AI is going to be used. “All legal…
The Fourth Edition of the Technology and Construction Court Guide came into force on 1 July 2026. It is much more than a routine update. Whilst much of the familiar structure remains, there are significant additions reflecting changes in legislation,…
For many personal injury and clinical negligence practitioners, the Coroners’ Court is unfamiliar territory. Yet an inquest can be one of the most important stages in a fatal accident claim. Knowing what the Coroner can (and cannot) do, understanding the…
Here we are looking at a decision related to the case we looked at yesterday relating to a medical expert in a family case. The judge gave a decision on whether an expert, who she found had failed in their…
We are continuing with our brief look at cases relating to liability. This case is a stress at work action where the claimant was successful. There are a considerable number of hurdles for claimants to deal with in this category…
I am grateful to barrister James Stark for sending me a copy of this judgment which is important to all those involved in landlord and tenant litigation, but also raises interesting issues as to how far an order of the…
We have looked several times recently at the problems caused when a litigator serves their own witness evidence on behalf of a client, particularly a “corporate” client. It often turns out that large parts of this statement are inadmissible, consisting…
One of the fascinating things about procedure is how the same principles apply across a whole range of cases. This is particularly the case with issues relating to evidence, particularly expert evidence. Earlier we looked at expert evidence in relation…
It is never helpful to a party’s case when a judge comes to the conclusion that the expert they have instructed is partisan. We have an example of this in this extremely high value case. There is interesting commentary on…
To ensure that those CLB readers who are personal injury litigators are not neglected there is a short series this work looking at recent decisions in relation to liability (a similar series on damages will feature in a few weeks…
Knowledge of the principles dealing with payments on account is important for all litigators. For successful parties it is a major aid in relation to cash flow. For the losing party a payment on account will reduce the interest payable. …
It is common for an unsuccessful part to argue that its liability to pay costs should be reduced because of the “conduct” of the successful party. We see such arguments raised here – with no degree of success. A party…
This post assumes that you have read post on this case earlier today. A claimant’s solicitor made a whole series of errors which led to the case being struck out against two defendants. We continue our series on what went…
This is a sorry tale. Someone who may have had a perfectly good claim for damages for personal injury has their case struck out because of procedural mishaps by their own solicitors. It all stems from a failure to serve…
The normal post on back to basics came out a day early (due to an “administrative” error). However it does give us a chance to revisit the practical implications when a litigator has to draft a witness statement on behalf…
Today we are looking at what is a common issue, and common mistake, when someone makes a witness statement for, or on behalf of a corporate client. The CPR expressly provides that a witness must state the source of “information…
If ever a case served as a warning to the risks of litigation it is this one. The claimant sought damages of up to £8.4 million but obtained judgment of £102,000. This turned out to be expensive litigation, with the…
In this case the judge considered an argument that a claimant who made, but failed, in an application for an interim injunction should not necessarily be liable for costs. This argument was put forward on the basis that the court…
This week we go back 12 years to look at one of the recurring themes of this blog: witness credibility. We looked at a judgment which was all about the judge’s assessment of the witnesses. This was made more difficult…
We are looking at a case where, on appeal, the judge found that a Deputy Master fell into error by failing to take into account relevant expert evidence provided by a claimant. The judge held that the Master had misunderstood…
There are numerous cases reported on this blog where judges have been critical of the “evidence” given by solicitors in witness statements. In many cases, even on cursory examination, it transpires that the lawyer is not in a position to…
In this case the Court of Appeal overturned a decision, itself made on appeal, which had struck out a crucial paragraph of Points of Dispute to a bill of costs. The crucial point here, however, is that this is not…
We are returning to this Court of Appeal decision for a second time. Initially we looked at the judgment in relation to the outcome – that the claims could be brought together. However there are important points made here in…
In this case the Court of Appeal upheld a decision that some 5,000 individual small value cases could proceed together as, essentially, one action. The provisions of CPR 7.3 were considered and the Court held that the High Court Judge…
This is a case where, on appeal, it was held that it was not open to a defendant to bring an action because they had already had the ability to raise issues with a court in Jersey. The judge held…
I will soon be starting a new series on “Advocacy – the Judge’s view”. This draws on the principle that whilst judges are the advocate’s clients they are their “consumers” so to speak. Before that it is useful to remind…
The Civil Justice Council is carrying out a Consultation on the Use of AI for the preparation of court documents. It published an update on its consultation findings yesterday. The preliminary view appears to be that the use of AI…
The previous post contained a review of the judge’s comments in the Farepak case. The judicial observations that witness statements are often misused and misunderstood is one of an extremely large number of such observations. (The “Related Posts” section below…
Recent posts have revisited the age-old problem of witness statements being misused. They often contain argument and comment. For that reason we are revisiting the observations of Mr Justice Smith in the Farepak case farepak-judges-statement. It presents an object lesson…
We are again looking at the lessons that practitioners can learn from a Legal Ombudsman decision. This time it relates to the need to explain the consequences of taking a procedural step. The point here is that many matters that…
This post arises out of the previous post in the series. However here I want to concentrate on one issue arising out of this. The claimant’s solicitors appear to have advised the claimant that they would not be liable to…
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