Non-compliant litigators will get short shrift, say Ed Lewis & Jennie Gillies
If one asked any lawyer practising in England and Wales whether parties to litigation were required to comply with the Civil Procedural Rules (CPR), the answer would be an emphatic “yes”; after all, the CPR derive from statutory instrument (the CPR 1998 SI 1998 No. 3132) and the various additional statutory instruments which have been enacted since.
Furthermore, the need for parties to comply with rules, practice directions and orders is not a new concept. It has always been at the core of the CPR (and those which they replaced) and such compliance is a fundamental part of the interests of the administration of justice as reiterated by Arden LJ in Stolzenberg v CIBC Mellon Trust Co Limited [2004] EWCA Civ 827, [2004] All ER (D) 363 (Jun): “Compliance with orders of the court is not a question of judicial amour propre. It goes to the essence of the rule of law that parties subject to the
