What a few months it has been!
I am not talking about erupting volcanoes and disrupted airline schedules, the General Election (although I see from Twitter that “Doing a Rochdale” is likely to rank highly in the litany of public gaffes alongside President Ford’s “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” and Gerald Ratner’s less than flattering description of his jewellery), the Greek economic crisis (now extended to Portugal and Spain, where next?) or the debacle over swine flu, the “pandemic” which never was (the use of the word was unnecessary and silly, designed to cause fear and anxiety).
For once, I mean something more prosaic and mainstream, although as someone with an interest in e-disclosure, I have to admit that I have found it quite exciting!
Continue reading ‘The name and shame blame game’
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’
The judgment in Gavin Goodale & Others v The Ministry of Justice & Others was delivered by the Senior Master, Master Whitaker, in November last year and is now available on BAILII [http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/B41.html]
Master Whitaker is well known as an advocate of proportionate e-disclosure in appropriate cases and also as a judge experienced in dealing with Group Litigation orders as in this case involving the Opiate Dependent Prisoners Litigation.
What makes this judgment of particular interest to those involved in the whole area of electronic disclosure is the fact that the Master saw fit to include in his judgement the ESI questionnaire which the Rule Committee decided recently to refer to another subcommittee.
Continue reading ‘The cat’s out of the bag’
What have the following in common?
- Britain’s forthcoming defence review.
- Jackie Fisher, First Sea Lord at the end of the 19th Century.
- John Terry, Chelsea and England footballer.
- Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus.
- The Royal Navy.
Answers on a postcard please! |
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Continue reading ‘Plan for peace, prepare for war’
A recent US case of a law firm suing a client contains a salutary lesson.
Debevoise & Plimpton had sued former client Candlewood for $6million in unpaid legal fees and found itself facing “an answer and counterclaim” seeking damages of $55million! [Ex-Debevoise Client Raises Nasty Counterclaims in Unpaid Bills Case, The American Lawyer, 14 January, 2010]
Apparently, some of Candlewood’s allegations against their former advisers were not too flattering which only goes to show that the publicity generated by this type of dispute is often publicity the law firm could well do without.
According to Candlewood’s counterclaim, D&P managed to bill for more than 15,000 hours or the equivalent of 10 lawyers working full time for the 10 month period in question, whereas Candlewood’s Delaware based lawyers successfully represented the company for two and a half years at a total cost of $450,000.
Could this happen in England?
Continue reading ‘David and Goliath’
Let me remind you of the hoary old statistic often trotted out, namely that some 90% of corporate documentation is now created electronically rather than on paper, and over 90% of that is NEVER turned into paper.
Whether the statistics are accurate or not, there can be no doubt that vast amounts of information are now held in electronic form. This leads to questions about the way companies deal with the storage of such information and what arrangements they have for its retrieval when faced with litigation, a regulatory investigation, an arbitration or a Freedom of Information application.
Continue reading ‘It’s the strategy, stupid!’
Latin phrases used to be an important part of a lawyer’s armoury, if only to confuse those without a classical education into believing that a mundane set of words must be important because of the solemnity with which they were intoned. Doubtless this also justified instructing a lawyer and a fee as the ordinary person could not be expected to act for himself (and in those days it almost invariably was a male) if they could not understand the language used.
I have an affectionate memory of learning Latin although too often my reports complained that “he could do better at Latin sentences if he learned the vocabulary and the conjugations”. I am in favour of it being taught, not least because it is one of the foundations of our own language today. However, nowadays the use of Latin in the law is dying out and a good thing too! Plain English is what we need so that everyone can understand what is being said and written.
Continue reading ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’
“May you live in interesting times” is reputedly the English version or paraphrase of an ancient Chinese curse.
Whatever its origin, the saying crops up in a variety of differing situations including a speech by Robert F Kennedy in 1966, a letter from Austen Chamberlain to a member of the US House of Representatives and more recently in a speech by Bob Garvin, the character played by Donald Sutherland in the 1994 film, Disclosure.
The film starred Demi Moore and Michael Douglas who, contrary to what you might expect from the title, were not engaged in a Hollywood version of Part 31 but played a couple who worked in a technology company and who became engrossed in a sexual harassment case!!
Continue reading ‘Confucius, he say…’
A Salutary Tale of Disclosure Obligations
Not everything in this blog is intended to be light hearted, as I found myself saying the other day. A kindly soul who had expressed approval of and interest in the blog had caused me to explain that there was intended to be a partly serious side to my musings as well as a bit of fun. So for those of you who only want to be mildly entertained, you should not read any further!
Actually, I rather hope you will read on, because litigation lawyers might have missed a recent decision which is relevant to everyone who conducts litigation in this jurisdiction.
I have to admit that I am a new convert to the webpages of the British and Irish Legal and Information Institute www.bailii.org. The website is a veritable mine of information about recent cases, and what I like is that, at a click of not very many buttons, you can find a table of recent cases with very fast hyperlinks to judgments in cases which may be of interest.
I had been looking for the judgment in a recent case with a very different subject matter (and nothing to do with e-disclosure!) which had been reported in the newspapers last week, when my eye alighted on a case several places up the list of latest cases. I had stumbled across a judgment of His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC dated 8th October 2009 in the case of Earles v Barclays Bank PLC .
Continue reading ‘Watch out! Costs About!’