Features

Jonathan Barnes examines the High Court’s effective monopoly on hearing defamation cases, and against a background of calls for county courts to get involved too asks, WHY NOT?  

On October 2011 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the then Draft Defamation Bill considered at paragraph 87 of its First Report that the availability of county courts to hear defamation cases, particularly outside London, should increase accessibility for ordinary citizens and would, in many cases, reduce costs as well. The Committee suggested that the Ministry of Justice should implement a pilot scheme to determine how this proposal might work in practice. 

Alexander Gunning QC examines the COMBAR/CLLS terms and considers the basis of assumption of liablities.  

It is around eighteen months since a combination of regulatory changes resulted in barristers commonly contracting with solicitors for the provision of their services. Opinions remain divided over whether the switch to contracting has been to the benefit of the Bar. In this article I provide a brief description of the COMBAR/CLLS terms and address two of their more important aspects: the basis for payment and the assumption of liabilities. 

In his first column for Counsel, Mark Hatcher examines the newly opened Parliamentary session and the business ahead.  

As the beginning of the holiday season approaches, MPs face another few weeks at Westminster before the House of Commons rises for the summer recess on 22 July. The Parliamentary session, which opened with The Queen’s Speech on 4 June, will have been running for just seven weeks before the Commons pack up for the summer. Allowing for a two-week interval of business before the party conferences begin in September, MPs can look forward to a 10-week break. 

John G Browning takes a brief look at judges’ activities on social media and how this issue is being controlled in the United States.  

The issue of judges blogging, tweeting, and posting on Facebook and other social networking sites is a controversial subject that transcends international borders. Here in the United Kingdom, of course, guidelines adopted in 2012 ban judicial office holders from such activities in order to avoid damaging “public confidence in their own impartiality or in the judiciary in general”. 

David Wurtzel reviews PESTS, a play by Vivienne Frantzmann and commissioned by theatre company Clean Break, at the Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre. The play is now on tour.  

It was well worth reading the script of PESTS over dinner before seeing the show... 

One in six people experience some form of hearing loss but are not always easy to identify. Sukhveer Kandola and Narita Bahra explain what barristers can do to secure a fair trial for clients with hearing difficulties.  

Imagine this. You are being cross-examined. You stand silently in the box, surrounded by smart people in wigs and gowns. The room is large, the ceiling is high and there is limited, if any, sound amplification. There is a constant murmur of voices in the background and an intermittent clicking sound. You stare ahead and you concentrate. You really concentrate, but it is not enough and you don’t quite catch the entire question. You ask for the question to be repeated, but you miss it again. You continue to look into the abyss because if you focus long enough, you will work out what is being asked. All eyes are on you and this is your moment to answer. Do you embarrass yourself by asking for the question to be repeated again? Or do you save face and guess what the question was and answer as best you can? You decide on the latter and you continue guessing until you are told you are no longer required and can go back and take a seat in the dock. Should you have said that you have problems with your hearing? You worry whether this will impact the outcome and whether you should say something to your counsel now. But surely he would have already noticed? So you sit down and hope it will all turn out okay. 

Mark Solon finds rumblings of Jackson discontent one year on – around fees, timetables, the amount of work and access to justice.  

Lord Justice Jackson’s reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules were introduced in April 2013. Their aim was to streamline civil litigation, increase access to justice, cut costs, speed up the process and focus on key issues at the outset of any matter. Minds were concentrated by Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd last November, when the Court of Appeal restricted the solicitors’ costs budget of more than £500,000 to court fees of £2,000 because the firm was late filing its budget (see Counsel March 2014 p 21). In other cases, “disproportionate and unreasonable” budgets were not approved, a direct result of the Jackson reforms. 

The recent “Victims’ Law” proposals by Sir Keir Starmer QC throw up the suggestion of judge as inquisitor and challenge our adversarial system. Professor Penny Cooper enters the debate and questions whether judges could or should cross-examine vulnerable witnesses.The recent “Victims’ Law” proposals by Sir Keir Starmer QC throw up the suggestion of judge as inquisitor and challenge our adversarial system. Professor Penny Cooper enters the debate and questions whether judges could or should cross-examine vulnerable witnesses.  

Writing under the heading ‘A Voice for Victims of Crime’, the former DPP Sir Keir Starmer QC is rightly concerned about matters which discourage victims from coming forward to report crimes and from subjecting themselves to cross-examination. He chairs a Labour Party Task Force (established in December 2013) which is to come up with proposals for a new ‘Victims’ Law’. He has suggested that a better way forward might be for judges rather than advocates to challenge the accounts of vulnerable witnesses... 

Dexter Dias QC on the first Female Genital Mutilation prosecutions.  

And so it begins. In April we finally witnessed something that activists who have been campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for years began to doubt would ever happen: the first defendants in a UK court facing criminal prosecution. The controversy around FGM, the mutilation of the genitals of young women and girls for non-medical reasons, has attained an unprecedented public prominence. There is an ongoing Parliamentary Inquiry. Eminent politicians profess profound concern. National newspapers launch petitions; television stations air documentaries. Yet for all the exposure, two simple stories ram home the brutal reality of FGM. 

Max Hardy on the Anglo-Dutch Exchange in London this Autumn and the need for barristers with spare rooms to act as hosts.  

Tuesday 28 October to Saturday 1 November 2014 sees the Anglo-Dutch Exchange (ADE) taking place in London. This biennial event alternates between The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. 30 young lawyers from the Young Bars of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam will be coming to London to see, hear and learn about the English justice system. The Exchange is being organised jointly by the Young Barristers’ Committee, the Junior Lawyers’ Division and the London Young Lawyers Group. It has one of the longest and most distinguished pedigrees of any legal exchange having been instituted in 1966.