PI Brief Update

Mitchell Revisited - Jeff Pedley, Whitfields Solicitors

05/02/14. The consequences of the legal Tsunami which struck in late 2013 continue to cause chaos and devastation whereby the unwary may suffer severe financial loss. This article is intended to review some recent cases, following Mitchell, and to suggest a way in which the liability for consequential losses, may be avoided.

I do not propose to rehearse the facts of Mitchell of which (hopefully) most Lawyers are now familiar. However, it is interesting to note that to some extent it was an “artificial” case. At the Cost Management Hearing (“CMH”) I understand that the Defendant’s Solicitors were themselves one day late in serving a “Schedule”. While the Claimant’s Solicitors acting for Mr Mitchell, for a number of reasons only served their schedule shortly before the CMH, the obvious solution, I suspect, in most Lawyers’ view, would have been to adjourn the CMH if that was necessary. Instead, I understand the Master decided to re-list it, at comparatively short notice, necessitating the adjournment of another case listed, whereby prejudice was caused to those Claimants by reason of the further delay.

The Master then refused relief from sanctions pursuant to the Amended CPR 3.9 relying, in part, upon the prejudice caused to the Claimants (whose case had to be vacated to accommodate the adjourned hearing). An Appeal inevitably followed which was “leapfrogged” to the Court of Appeal (“CA”) who took the opportunity of upholding the Master’s decision to refuse relief against sanction whereby Mr Mitchell (who fortunately was on a pre 1^st April 2013 CFA) could not recover any costs except the Court issue fees. A harsh sanction indeed leaving Mr Mitchell’s Solicitors (or their insurers) the following options...

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