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10 November 2017 / Dominic Regan
Issue: 7769 / Categories: Features , Profession
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In the heat of battle...

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Dominic Regan recounts tales of momentous show downs, fibbing & worse in & out of court

Trial represents the culmination of a dispute. Like a boxing match, two opponents enter the ring, each believing they will win. One is going to be disappointed. Worse still, each party will be confronted by a hostile opponent. To cap it all, a testy judge can let rip. Those considerations regularly provoke settlement, with particular emphasis on ADR. However, a steady flow of optimists fight on.

Prove it or lose it

Anything and everything can go wrong. Marathon Asset Management LLP v Seddon (2017) 2 Costs LR 255. The claimant had rejected a Pt 36 offer to settle pitched at £1.5m. The trial did not quite go to plan. While there was breach there was no evidence of consequential loss. A slightly lower award of £1 was made. Prove it or lose it as the old litigation adage goes.

Tales from the dock

Experts are regularly paid large sums of money for their litigation opinions. I felt utter

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

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NEWS
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A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
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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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A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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