The 1970s was the decade we all like to forget. Amongst many dubious inventions, I have had reason to recall recently the TV series called Fantasy Island. The owner charged wealthy individuals $50,000 each to come to the island and live out their fantasies.
Pretty well all the fantasies were unlikely. I suppose that is what a fantasy is all about, but I thought the 70s were long since behind me until I learned the other day that a law firm had put in a bill for a piece of litigation amounting to £105 million!
Last year, I wrote a piece [King Charles I and the Twitterati, 27th October 2009] about the company involved in this case, Trafigura, although at the time I was more interested in the concept of the super injunction obtained by the company than costs.
Continue reading ‘Fantasy island’
I very much doubt that Ben Elton would find the contents of last week’s meeting of the Commercial Litigation Forum to be suitable material for an episode of Blackadder!
My brief report on the subjects raised was in my post last week entitled “Litigating in the 21st Century“. Many of you will be familiar with the themes of the final series of Blackadder with Edmund and Baldrick in the trenches with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry’s Melchett and the wonderful “Darling” back at base. The frivolity and sheer fun is overshadowed throughout by the grim awareness of what is going to happen and a realisation that, for all their silliness, the men in the trenches are about to go over the top.
Continue reading ‘A cunning plan’
Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb were two bad mice. Beatrix Potter conceived the story of how they both created mayhem in the dolls’ house belonging to Lucinda and Jane, while the dolls were out in their pram. When the little girl who owns the dolls’ house discovers the mess, she gets a doll dressed up as a policeman while her more practical nanny sets a mouse trap. The two bad mice have to atone for their naughtiness.
Now we have a report in The Lawyer [Russian Retribution, 31 March, 2010] that two of Russia’s wealthiest men are to face one another in Court in 2011 after lawyers acting for Roman Abramovich failed to persuade Mr Justice Colman to strike out claims by Boris Berezovsky that Abramovich used coercive tactics against his former business partner which Berezovsky alleges caused him billions of pounds in losses.
Continue reading ‘Of mice and men’
This week I trained my 100th lawyer on using the CaseLogistix review platform. During the dozen or so training sessions I have conducted over the past couple of months both face to face and via the web a number of people have commented that it is unusual to see the Managing Director running training sessions. This got me thinking about the nature of the industry and the approach we adopt at Millnet.
Over the past six years I have witnessed countless sales pitches and demonstrations of litigation support software. Reflecting on these, they have been more often poor than good and have at times been truly dire. Dissecting the reasons for this it seems there are a number of common deficiencies on the part of the demonstrator – Continue reading ‘Musings from the coalface’
Chris Dale begins his report Millnet offer £10,000 of e-Discovery services for free with Virgil’s phrase, “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” which is commonly, if loosely, translated as “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
If you have been abreast of recent economic developments, you will know that the Greeks are unlikely to be bearing any gifts for anyone just now. The poor things have been led by the nose ever since entry into the euro into believing that their Government can go on spending money without any idea how they are going to pay it back. We in this country should on no account be smug as our Government has been the most profligate ever and has racked up debts which will keep us all in hock for years to come.
Continue reading ‘Why look a gift horse in the mouth?’
Many readers (and we have had a dramatic increase since the start of the year) will recall that my modest hope for 2010 was that there would be more strategic thought during the litigation process than is often apparent when we are called in to assist.
Frankly, not a lot of strategic thought can be undertaken when the disclosure deadline is only days away and there is a terabyte of data to review and the other side has just produced more material than you thought possible or likely.
Of course, if you have plenty of time you can mull over strategy to your heart’s content but most litigation cases do not allow the participants that luxury!
So, how can you make time?
Continue reading ‘Readiness is next to godliness’
Fresh from the mauling the Chilcot inquisitors suffered recently at the hands of Tony Blair, the former PM would doubtless wish to offer a similarly spirited and robust defence of his 1996 speech when campaigning for the return of a Government of New Labour, in which he asserted that the three main priorities for government were: Education, Education, Education.
My recollection, on first hearing this speech, was that I thought immediately of the rather turgid 1970 film about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, called “Tora. Tora, Tora”! Presumably this was because I did not take the content of the speech seriously enough and could only think of the film with a similarly three-worded title (which I believe means “Attack, Attack, Attack”)!
Now, 14 years after the speech and billions of pounds of investment later, some would argue that the priorities had not necessarily been achieved and might question whether the money had been put to good use.
Continue reading ‘Education, education, errm…’
In a judgement dated 26th January 2010 and running to more than 500 pages [BSkyb Ltd & Anor v HP Enterprise Services UK Ltd & Anor (Rev 1) [2010] EWHC 86 (TCC) (26 January 2010)] Mr Justice Ramsey accepted one of the five main claims by BSkyB against EDS in their long running dispute. As a result, BSkyB looks forward to an award of around £200 million at a damages hearing expected to take place later his month.
The limitation of liability clause in the contract did not help EDS in the end as the judge found the company guilty of deceit in making fraudulent misrepresentations to win the original contract. HP, now the owner of EDS, has indicated it intends to appeal.
Continue reading ‘Sky in the pie, EDS burns fingers’
Ingenuity is the most remarkable human trait. Without it, we would not have discovered how to make fire, how to fashion tools and how to manufacture things useful to our everyday lives. We learned to stand on our hind legs which made life easier for our ancestors. We can also invent things which make our lives easier.
The terrible disaster in Haiti which dominated the news in recent weeks is not something which humans can prevent, nor it seems, accurately predict. We can only react and often that reaction is neither pretty nor particularly effective, but those who try to alleviate the suffering in that small island must be applauded.
It was, therefore, with some relief that I alighted upon three news items which, amongst the doom and gloom, caused me to smile about the ingenuity of the human race at a time when at least parts of it are sunk in understandable despair.
Continue reading ‘Sticks and snails and shaggy dog’s tales’