Lawyers, take care

Lawyers should think how their actions will be portrayed by the press and whether reputational damage to their client will result before taking a legal course of action, as the consequences of not doing so could outweigh the benefits of fighting the case, writes barrister and lecturer Phillip Morgan in NLJ.

Morgan uses the recent case of JGE v Trustees of the Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust as an example. This concerned the question of whether a bishop can be vicariously liable for the acts of a priest within the diocese.

“The point of law in JGE, a technical legal point, of whether there could be vicarious liability for a diocesan priest, a non-employee, was generally misunderstood in media reports and erroneous reporting was widespread,” he writes. While the diocese may not have been wrong in pursuing the legal point as a matter of law, “in doing so they exposed themselves, and the wider Roman Catholic Church to adverse national publicity”. The resulting cost in terms of reduced donations and influence could be “severe”.

“Sometimes it will be more commercially prudent to settle a claim brought against a client, even where a strong defence is present, if the damage to goodwill by running the defence and the cost to rectify it outweighs the settlement.”