Summary Civil Justice System 5

Civil Justice System 5 – History of Recent Reforms
Options to resolve civil dispute
 Negotiate/complain/reach agreement or ADR
 No agreement/ADR doesn’t work – only option way to resolve is to issue a civil claim
Recent Reforms
 1998 – Woolf reforms – Civil Procedure Rules
o Aim of Civil Justice Review: improve machinery of civil justice – reduce cost, delay + complexity
o Lord Woolf found
 Too expensive – often costs exceeded value of claim
 Too slow – too adversarial + parties set the pace
 Lack of equality between parties – wealthy have an advantage
 Too uncertain – in terms of time + costs
 System incomprehensible to many litigants
o Woolf: specific measures in Civil Proce4dure Rules 1998
 To promote settlement/trial as last resort
 Pre-action protocols – setting out cased + disclosing evidence before issuing Claim
 Part 36 offers – a rule about costs if offer rejected + outcome at trial is same/better
 Encouraging use of ADR
 To reduce complexity
 Civil Procedure Rules + single code
o Replaced old rules specific to High Court (Rules of Supreme Court)
 + County Court (County Court Rules)
 Structure of rules: Different ‘Parts’ dealing with different aspect of procedure
o Rule, plus Practice Direction
 To reduce costs
 Case management inc allocated to one of three tracks
o Proportionate to value of claim (or complexity)
 Single Joint Experts for lower value claims
 Some fixed costs (cap on amount recoverable from opponent)
 Part 36 offers – a rule about costs if offer rejected + outcome at trial = same/better
o Did Woolf reforms work
 CPR: currently 1311 pages long
 100th update on 1 Oct 2018 – concerns about delay + cost continue
o Costs shifting rule in England + Wales
 General rule: unsuccessful party pays the successful party’s legal costs
 Hence: Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs) – ‘no win no fee’
 Client only liable for own lawyers’ costs if wins
o ‘Champerty’ and ‘maintenance’ – common law rules used to prohibit champerty + maintenance
 Maintenance: 3rd party assisting/ ‘maintaining’ another person’s litigation
 Champerty: paying for litigation in return for a share of the ‘winnings’
 1999 – Access to Justice Act 1999 – legal aid changes + ‘no win no fee’ agreements
o Changed legal aid/funding for personal injury claims (PI)
o PI claims make up large proportion of civil litigation cases
 Most civil claims issued = money claims but PI = largest proportion for ‘damages’
o AJA 1999 removed PI from legal aid + enabled lawyers to offer ‘no win no fee’/conditional fee
agreements (CFAs)
o SS 58 and 58A:
 Provided that ‘no win no fee agreements’ were enforceable
 So that costs could be recovered from unsuccessful party
 At same time legal aid = removed as source of funding for personal injury claims
o How are litigation lawyers paid
 Solicitors: usually by the hour/fixed sums for routine items