Tag Archives: costs

Jones v Jones

For a run down of the substantive issue in this case (Link to judgment on Baili] – thanks Bailii) see Family Lore. However, for the more amusing side of this judgment read on…You can also read Joshua Rozenberg in Standpoint magazine.

*screeches to a halt* Oh. In fact, since I started this post and whilst I was being waylaid with the construction of a skeleton argument about whether or not an adoption panel had made a valid decision and thus whether or not placement proceedings were valid (they hadn’t and they weren’t), John Bolch has beaten me to it with a second post.

It really is worth reading the post and the judgments – the Jones judgment lightened up our Friday afternoon in chambers last week no end. And it’s not often you can say that about a judgment of the Court of Appeal!

Legal Costs

Short piece on ‘Today’ on Tues morning about costs in civil cases. I switched on as a clip of Lord Justice Judge opining about the state of civil justice was part way through. Evan Davis moved onto an interview with Bridget Prentice. Oh goody, I thought as I drove to court, something relevant to my line of work and NOT about banks. What struck me though was the complete failure of the piece to distinguish between court fees and legal costs. Unusually for Evan, who is pretty much always on the ball and whose faux naive questions make me chuckle, it sounded as if Evan himself had no appreciation of the distinction between legal costs and court fees (which are piffling in comparison to legal costs, at least unless you are a local authority issuing care proceedings). This was made worse by the fact that Bridget Prentice, in response to a question about ‘legal costs’, asserted that a low income claimant would know prior to issue that they would be able to be protected against paying these. It was apparent to a lawyer that she was talking about remission of court issue fees on a means tested basis but non-lawyers could have been forgiven for thinking that there was no risk of a costs order being made against a low income claimant, which of course is very much NOT accurate. Not helpful.

Did anyone else listen to this? Was it as confusing as I thought it was, or was I simply too distracted by the traffic on the M5 to listen properly to what was being said?