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10 March 2021
Issue: 7924 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Civil way
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Civil way: 12 March 2021

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B&PC witnesses to go into hiding; housing reform; latest FPR update; flexible challenge; damages whipped and lashed.

WITNESS STATEMENT ORDEAL

We complete our look at the 127th CPR update (see ‘Civil way’, NLJ 26 February 2021, p14) with the dreaded new PD 57A and its statement of best practice on Pts 7 and 8 trial witness statements in the Business and Property Courts (B&PC). The essential first step is to establish when you can ignore it. Chuckle away if you can get your witness statements signed before 6 April 2021, you are not litigating out of a B&PC or the statements are for an interim hearing or proceedings specified at para 1.3 of the PD (including most insolvency business and claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 and if they don’t amend the PD to put in the ‘and’, I will impose the strictest sanction known to man). Admiralty proceedings commenced by forms ADM1/1A/15/20 escape as well but a practice note from the

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Carey Olsen—Patrick Ormond

Carey Olsen—Patrick Ormond

Partner joinscorporate and finance practice in British Virgin Islands

Dawson Cornwell—Naomi Angell

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Penningtons Manches Cooper—Graham Green

Penningtons Manches Cooper—Graham Green

Media and technology expert joins employment team as partner in Cambridge

NEWS
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Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
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