I felt a deep need to prove myself in my early years of practice. If I could show how clever I was, I would. It was, therefore, fortunate that I conducted a case where I learned my lesson sometime in my seventh year of practice. We acted for a statutory body that sacked an employee over misconduct about ten years after the complaint was made. He sued them for his dismissal, seeking declarations and damages. …
This is one of the applications I dislike, if not dread. The application appears administratively innocuous. However, the legal implications of losing one can be severe. The basis of every Extension of Time application (‘EOT’) is the applicant’s or its solicitors’ failure to file or do something within the deadline set by the rules or directed by the court. It is typical for the lawyer’s fault to be a reason for the application. After all, …
In my lifetime thus far, I have been all three. The only roles I have not been in are that of a prosecutor and judge. Who knows. The future is a strange place. As a patron of the courts I resorted to it to assert my rights under the Consumer Protection Act 1999 (‘CP99’). I wrote about my experience some time ago in The Day I Was a Litigant | Unfair Contract Terms. In summary, …
This is an approach to preparing an application for leave to appeal. An appeal is a request to a higher court to rehear and review the court below’s decision (‘the original decision’). An appeal can happen from the subordinate courts, comprised of the magistrates and sessions courts, to the High Court (Scenario 1) and subsequently from the High Court to the Court of Appeal (Scenario 2). It can also happen from the High Court to …
In the preparation of trials, the court orders parties, as a matter of course, to prepare a Statement of Agreed Facts (‘SAF’) and a Statement of Issues to be Tried (‘SIT’): see Order 34 rule 2(2)(j) and (k), Rules of Court 2012. There are good reasons for this. The purpose of these statements is two-fold. First, it is to encourage and facilitate the narrowing, outlining and identification of the disputed factual areas and legal issues …