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The Brexit of CPR

28 March 2017 / Richard Harrison
Issue: 7741 / Categories: Opinion , Procedure & practice , CPR
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Richard Harrison looks at the treatment of costs management in the Merrix case & finds some interesting parallels

Brexit, as well as meaning “Brexit”, means that the political establishment can talk about and do little else. We seem to have a single issue administration. It has devoted itself to implementing the “will of the people” even when that desire was expressed by a very small majority, apparently bamboozled by misrepresentations and manipulated by demagogues and self-interested media, into voting for a simple “yes” or “no”.

That binary solution is one which no sensible person would want to apply to a complex cultural and commercial tapestry built up over 40 years. It simply cannot be unravelled without immense effort and possibly immense damage.

By presenting the British people with such a misconceived, simple choice about which to express a “will”, the last Conservative government gave a poisonous legacy to the present one and it is one which Mrs May and her colleagues are struggling to implement rationally. Some believe it will cause immense damage

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Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan—Andrew Savage

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Charles Russell Speechlys—Robert Lundie Smith

Charles Russell Speechlys—Robert Lundie Smith

Leading patent litigator joins intellectual property team

NEWS
The government’s plan to introduce a Single Professional Services Supervisor could erode vital legal-sector expertise, warns Mark Evans, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, in NLJ this week
Writing in NLJ this week, Jonathan Fisher KC of Red Lion Chambers argues that the ‘failure to prevent’ model of corporate criminal responsibility—covering bribery, tax evasion, and fraud—should be embraced, not resisted
Professor Graham Zellick KC argues in NLJ this week that, despite Buckingham Palace’s statement stripping Andrew Mountbatten Windsor of his styles, titles and honours, he remains legally a duke
Writing in NLJ this week, Sophie Ashcroft and Miranda Joseph of Stevens & Bolton dissect the Privy Council’s landmark ruling in Jardine Strategic Ltd v Oasis Investments II Master Fund Ltd (No 2), which abolishes the long-standing 'shareholder rule'
In NLJ this week, Sailesh Mehta and Theo Burges of Red Lion Chambers examine the government’s first-ever 'Afghan leak' super-injunction—used to block reporting of data exposing Afghans who aided UK forces and over 100 British officials. Unlike celebrity privacy cases, this injunction centred on national security. Its use, the authors argue, signals the rise of a vast new body of national security law spanning civil, criminal, and media domains
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