The Court of Appeal has today handed down its decision on infant cases where the amount of damages is less than £1,000.00 and approval proceedings have been issued. The court has held that only the costs of obtaining an advice from a Solicitor/Counsel on the merits of settlement and (potentially) the costs of the proceedings themselves such as the preparation of the claim form and the attendance at court, unless the matter is complex, which is ... read more »

Receiving Party solicitor’s have been handed a belated Christmas present by the Court of Appeal when it handed down the recent decision of Adrian Simcoe v Jacuzzi UK Group Plc [2012] EWCA Civ 137 holding interest in CFA cases is recoverable from the date of judgment giving rise to an entitlement to costs (‘the incipitur date’) as opposed to the date of agreement or quantification of the costs payable as a result of judgment (‘the allocatur date ... read more »

Infant Approval - v - Parental Indemnity In a case concerning a minor, settlement is all too often reached using the fictional procedure commonly known as ‘Parental Indemnity’. This is done despite the rules contained within CPR 21.10 which makes it clear that no settlement, compromise or payment shall be valid without the approval of the court. Therefore the Claimant solicitor who settles a Claimant minor’s case by way of Parental Indemnity n ... read more »

Francis v Francis and Dickerson still alive! The approach that hindsight should not be applied to an assessment of costs is well established.  The Court will consider the claim for costs in light of the facts known to the solicitor at the time and not those facts subsequently discovered. This approach was summed up by Justice Sachs in the case of Re Francis v Francis and Dickerson [1955] 3 All ER 836: “When considering whether or not an ... read more »

PREMATURE ISSUE – DELIBERATE ATTEMPT TO CIRCUMVENT THE PREDICTIVE COSTS SCHEME?   This is a question regularly asked by the Defendant Insurers. Could a settlement have been achieved without recourse to litigation?  The Court is now often being asked to determine this point, as premature issue is now becoming more prevalent. The protocols impose obligations on both parties to lay their cards openly on the table from an early stage. At ... read more »

Many of our clients now transfer their cases to us electronically, most are sent automatically from their case management system. The process is typically as follows: Your fee earner will hit a button in your case management system that will execute an action to export the data. At Compass we use Proclaim but most case management systems are capable of exporting data to standard formats such as CSV/XML or plain text. If you use a system other ... read more »

Welcome to the all new Compass Web site and blog. ... read more »