Bones of contention

The Court of Appeal has recently been highly critical of the extent of the appeal bundles before it, particularly the excessive length of the skeleton arguments. It has called on practitioners to stop this tendency. (Midgulf International Ltd v Groupe Chimique Tunisien [2010] EWCA Civ 66), [2010] All ER (D) 114 (Feb).

In the Midgulf case, the appeal bundles contained 15 lever arch files, five of these included over 100 authorities and three files which, although referred to as core bundles, were not referred to at all during the appeal. The appellant’s skeleton ran to 132 pages and the supervising Lord Justice had to order the appellant to produce a proper summary of argument. Although it did so, it complained it was unable to develop its arguments properly and referred back to its detailed argument in the initial skeleton. When asked to explain why the Court of Appeal had been burdened with so many documents, the solicitor advocate for the appellant explained that