Archive for the ‘Chapter 8’ Category
Reforming the Civil Justice system
There have recently been two reports making proposals for reform of the civil justice system.
In the first, published in February 2015, a committee of the Civil Justice Council, chaired by Professor Richard Susskind made proposals for the development of online dispute resolution (ODR)
In summary the report calls for radical change in the way that the court system of England and Wales handles low value civil claims. We strongly advocate the introduction of online dispute resolution (ODR). The committee argued, in outline:
- For low value claims, we are concerned that our current court system is too costly, too slow, and
too complex, especially for litigants in person. - To overcome these problems, our main recommendation is that HM Courts & Tribunals Service
should establish a new, Internet-based court service, known as HM Online Court (HMOC). - On HMOC, members of the Judiciary would decide cases on an online basis, interacting
electronically with parties. Earlier resolution of disputes on HMOC would also be achieved –
through the work of individuals we call ‘facilitators’. - We predict two major benefits would flow from HMOC – an increase in access to justice (a
more affordable and user-friendly service) and substantial savings in the cost of the court system. - ODR is not science fiction. We present a series of case studies from around the world that clearly
demonstrate its potential. - We argue that to improve access to justice, it is vital not just to have better methods of resolving
disputes but also to have effective ways of avoiding and containing disputes. ODR can help here. - The technology underpinning ODR is evolving rapidly. We make a series of predictions about
the likely capabilities of later generations of ODR system. - Our Group would be pleased to work closely with HMCTS in a new phase of work, that should
focus on piloting the proposals in this report.
Their report is available at https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/reviews/online-dispute-resolution/odr-report-february-2015/
More recently JUSTICE has published an important report – Civil Justice in an Age of Austerity. A Committee, chaired by retired Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stanley Burnton, argues that the age of austerity should also be seen as ‘an age of opportunity’ to change the way the civil justice system operates.
It supports the proposals for ODR made by the Civil Justice Group (above) but goes further proposing that the courts take more responsibility for ‘triaging’ cases – with court officials playing a more proactive role in helping parties to disputes to resolve their problems themselves, leaving judges to deal with the most complex cases. It also argues for better information about legal rights and obligations.
The JUSTICE report is available at http://justice.org.uk/delivering-justice-in-an-age-of-austerity-report-launch/
Given the General Election, it will be some time before policy initiatives – if any – emerge from Government. But they show that there are influential figures in the legal system anxious to promote greater efficiency and a clearer user focus on the work of the courts.
Online Dispute Resolution – proposals from the Civil Justice Council
The Civil Justice Council has just published an important report on the potential for the use of new processes to deal with disputes in small value claims, under £25,000.
In summarey, the report states:
‘Our principal recommendation is that HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) should establish a new, Internet-based court service, known as HM Online Court (HMOC). We recommend that HMOC should be a three-tier service.
- Tier One of HMOC should provide Online Evaluation. This facility will help users with a grievance to classify and categorize their problem, to be aware of their rights and obligations, and to understand the options and remedies available to them.
- Tier Two of HMOC should provide Online Facilitation. To bring a dispute to a speedy, fair conclusion without the involvement of judges, this service will provide online facilitators. Communicating via the Internet, these individuals will review papers and statements and help parties through mediation and negotiation. They will be supported where necessary, by telephone conferencing facilities. Additionally, there will be some automated negotiation, which are systems that help parties resolve their differences without the intervention of human experts.
- Tier Three of HMOC should provide Online Judges – full-time and part-time members of the Judiciary who will decide suitable cases or parts of cases on an online basis, largely on the basis of papers submitted to them electronically as part of a structured process of online pleading. This process will again be supported, where necessary, by telephone conferencing facilities.
2.5
The establishment of HMOC will require two major innovations in the justice system of England and Wales. The first is that some judges should be trained and authorized to decide some cases (or aspects of some cases) on an online basis. The second innovation is that the state should formally fund and make available some online facilitation and online evaluation services.
To ensure the implementation of our principal recommendation, we propose three supporting recommendations:
• that HMCTS introduces an ODR stream into its current programme for the reform of civil, family, and tribunal work, and allocates a modest fraction of its £75 million annual reform budget (over five years) for the establishment of HMOC;
• that all political parties offer in-principle support for HMOC, as a viable way of increasing access to justice and reducing the cost of the resolution of civil disputes; and
• that the Civil Justice Council invites the ODR Advisory Group to commence a new phase of work, collaborating with HMCTS and the Judiciary in formally piloting ODR, designing HMOC, and raising awareness of this new approach to the handling of civil disputes.
Although our terms of reference are restricted to civil claims under the value of £25,000, we believe that that the jurisdiction of HMOC should also be extended to suitable family disputes and to appropriate cases that come before today’s tribunals.’
It seems to me that developments on these lines are inevitable, for two particular reasons:
First, there are already in existence in the UK a number of dispute resolution procedures that are efficient and very cost effective using modern IT. Examples mentioned in the report include the Financial Services Ombudsman scheme, the Traffic Penalty Tribunal scheme, and Resolver.co.uk. However the majority of live examples are currently operating abroad. It is a pity that other similar procedures already operating in UK are not mentioned – for example the tenancy dispost dispute resolution schemes, all of which operate online and are free to appellants. (I am Chair of the Board of one of the companies offering this service.)
Second, the EU is in the final stages of ensuring that new forms of consumer ADR and ODR will be in place in member countries in the near future.
However, I also think more work needs to be done on considering the sources of the resources needed for running the service. Will this all come from the state? from users? from insurance companies needing to get disputes resolved? from industry bodies?
It also needs to be asked who the adjudicators should be. The report talks about members of the judiciary. But large numbers of disputes do not involve complex questions of law – they depend on the finding of facts based on evidence provided. It is not self evident to me that the only people capable of reaching sensible conclusions are judges. Indeed the existing schemes demonstrate that this is not the case.
Further development will be noted here as they occur.
Meantime, the CJC report is available at http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/reviews/online-dispute-resolution/odr-report-february-2015/
Supporting Heroes – the new law
On 30 July 2014, I summarised the Government’s proposals for ‘supporting heroes’ contained in the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill 2015. The proposals have now completed the Parliamentary process, and the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015 is now on the statute book.
To recap, the Act provides that when dealing with negligence claims or claims for breach of statutory duty the courts should consider:
- whether the alleged negligence or breach of statutory duty occurred when the person was acting for the benefit of society or any of its members (section 2) ;
- whether the person , in carrying out the activity giving rise to the claim , demonstrated a generally responsible approach towards protecting the safety or other interests of others (section 3) ;
- whether the alleged negligence or breach of statutory duty occurred when the person was acting heroically by intervening in an emergency to assist an individual in danger and without regard to his or her own safety or other interests (section 4).
The Act will come into force on a date to be announced later.
Court fees: further changes
In June 2014, new fees for taking civil proceedings were introduced, designed to bring in additional revenue to the Court Service/Ministry of Justice.
In January 2015, a further paper was published by the Ministry of Justice which announced further decisions relating to court fees, and which raised for consultation yet other suggestions for increasing court fees. These proposals are set against a background where the income which the initial changes had hoped to generate has not been realised.
The principal change is that the fee to issue proceedings for the recovery of money is raised to 5% of the value of the claim for all claims over £10,000, up to a maximum of £10,000. The fees for claims of less than £10,000, which represent over 90% of all money claims, will remain at their current levels. Discounts of 10% will apply to these fees where the claim is initiated electronically using the Secure Data Transfer facility or Money Claims Online.
The Government has decided not to implement the proposed increase to the fee for a divorce, or either of the options for charging higher fees for commercial proceedings.
The Government is now consulting on proposals
- to raise the fee for a possession claim by £75.
- to increase the fee for a general application in civil proceedings from £50 to £100 for an application without notice or by consent; and from£155 to £255 for an application on notice which is contested.
It is proposed that the latter proposal should be subject to an exemption for:
- applications to vary or extend an injunction for protection from harassment or violence;
- applications for a payment to be made from funds held in court; and
- applications made in proceedings brought under the Insolvency Act 1986.
The consultation period is only 6 weeks. Final decisions will be announced in due course.
For full details see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/enhanced-court-fees-the-government-response-to-part-2-of-the-consultation-on-reform-of-court-fees
Supporting heroes?
In my book, I consider the question whether there is a ‘compensation culture’. Over recent years, it has been frequently argued that we have become too keen to resort to litigation when things go wrong – on the basis that bad events are other people’s’ fault -, rather than accept that sometimes one is the victim of bad luck. I argue that this view should be challenged – on the basis that research evidence shows that huge numbers of people with potential legal claims in fact do nothing about them – either through ignorance, fear of costs, reluctance to go to lawyers etc.
At the same time, however, advertising campaigns encouraging people to claim when they have had accidents are perceived as encouraging the bringing of unmeritorious proceedings, which in turn can add to insurance costs.
The Government has recently come to the view that the present state of the law has led to people thinking that they should not intervene in emergencies, or run public events, or lead school trips in case they get sued for negligence if things go wrong. And insurance companies have been seen to be charging high premiums which have led to events not taking place.
The Government’s response is the publication of the rather imposingly named Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill 2014-15. It is actually a very short Bill, but one which, if enacted, will require judges to make some rather teasing judgements. Indeed, the outcome of the Bill may be to encourage, rather than deter, the bringing of actions.
The Bill provides that when dealing with negligence claims or claims for breach of statutory duty the courts should to consider:
- whether the alleged negligence or breach of statutory duty occurred when the person was acting for the benefit of society or any of its members (clause 2) ;
- whether the person , in carrying out the activity giving rise to the claim , demonstrated a generally responsible approach towards protecting the safety or other interests of others (clause 3) ;
- whether the alleged negligence or breach of statutory duty occurred when the person was acting heroically by intervening in an emergency to assist an individual in danger and without regard to his or her own safety or other interests (clause 4).
For further information see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/grayling-law-must-protect-everyday-heroes
See also http://public-scrutiny-office.org/bills/2014-2015/social-action-responsibility-and-heroism
Court fees: the changes
Accompanying the creation of the single Family Court and the single County Court, the Government moved swiftly to introduce new court fees, adopting – for the most part – the principles it set out in its consultation document published in late 2013 (see blog March 2014).
The Government has acted to introduce new fees which, broadly, increase as a case proceeds – with court hearings incurring rather higher fees than hitherto. Those interested in the details can see the new fees set out in https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/court-fees-proposals-for-reform.
Interestingly, the announcement of these increases was made on the same day that a research report was published which suggested that on the whole litigants thought the fee levels were reasonable and would not have been deterred from bringing a case simply because of the fees charged. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-role-of-court-fees-in-affecting-users-decisions-to-bring-cases-to-the-civil-and-family-courts.
Time will tell whether the new fees act as a deterrent to access to justice; intuitively it could be anticipated that there would be some effect.
Reforming the Justice system: creation of a single County Court
In addition to creating the new Family Court, the Crime and Courts Act 2013 also established the single County Court. This is achieved by making provision for the removal of existing geographical jurisdictional boundaries from the county courts. This should allow greater flexibility in the use of courts and the removal of unnecessary traps for the unwary.
Existing court buildings will remain in use as the new County Court will sit at various locations within England and Wales in a way similar to the High Court. It will have a single seal and a single identity to indicate its national jurisdiction. The court houses in which it will convene will act as hearing centres with court administrative offices attached to them.
The introduction of the single County Court requires consequential amendments throughout the Civil Procedure Rules, for example the renaming of individual county courts as County Court hearing centres.
All claims issued at the County Court Money Claims Centre or at the renamed County Court Business Centre (including those issued online through Money Claim Online) will remain at the business centre of receipt up to the point where a hearing is required, or the claimant wishes to enforce a judgment other than by way of issue of a warrant. Restrictions on where particular types of claim may be issued (e.g. forfeiture claims) are removed. However, if a claim has not been started in the appropriate County Court hearing centre, then, following issue, the claim or application will be sent or transferred to the appropriate hearing centre in accordance with the relevant rules and practice directions relating to those proceedings.
Alongside the creation of the single County Court, the Government has abolished the need for the Lord Chancellor to give his approval for every occasion that a High Court Judge hears a case at a County Court, removing an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and making sure judges can sit where they are needed.
The Government has also made a series of changes to the powers that can be exercised by the different levels of the civil court system. For example, the maximum limit for the value of equity cases which can be held at local county courts had remained unchanged since the 1990s at £30,000. Any cases above that level had to go to the High Court instead, creating an ever-greater workload burden there. So reflecting current house prices, the level has been raised to £350,000, so that these cases can once again be settled at local county courts without the delay of going to the High Court.
Similarly, for cases about claims for money, the Government increased the minimum value where cases can be commenced at the High Court, from £25,000 to £100,000. This again reflects long-term inflation and will make sure county courts can deal with smaller cases more quickly and the High Court will not be unnecessarily clogged up. The exception to this is for personal injury cases, for which other reforms have already been put in place over the past few years, including the overhaul of no-win no-fee deals and creation and extension of the Claims Portal which now sees tens of thousands of cases dealt with quickly and efficiently.
The changes have also made it possible for freezing orders to be issued in more circumstances at the County Court, to reflect the higher value of the cases they will be hearing.
The view of the Minister are in https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-quiet-revolution-in-our-civil-courts
What is happening to Judicial Review?
Judicial review lies at the heart of our constitutional settlement. It is acknowledged that Parliamentary Sovereignty means that what Parliament legislates is the law. The rule of law implies that everyone, including officials of the state, must act within the law. The doctrines of the Separation of Powers and the independence of the judiciary give ultimate authority to the judiciary to decide whether or not decisions taken by state officials are lawful or not.
In recent years, some have argued that judicial review has been used not really to challenge the legality of decisions taken by officials, but to delay the consequences of decisions taken by officials. There are two specific contexts in which it is argued that judicial review has been used more as a delaying tactic than as a serious legal challenge: immigration and asylum cases; and planning decisions. These arguments are strongly challenged, in particular by public lawyers who deny that there is misuse or abuse of the system.
Nevertheless, the present Government has decided that the existing rules need to be changed. The first tranche of announcements were made in 2013 (see blog item for October 2013).
In February 2014, further announcements were made, many of which are being taken further in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014.
- Following the earlier decision to transfer immigration and asylum cases to the Tribunals Service, the Government decided that planning cases should also be diverted away from the Administrative Court and sent to a new Planning Court. (This replaces an earlier proposal that such cases should go to a new planning chamber in the Tribunals Service.) The Planning Court will be a part of the High Court, but there will be specialist judges who will deal with planning cases – not dissimilar to the specialist courts in the commercial law area. The hope is that, by taking planning cases out of the general run of cases going to the Administrative Court, they can be dealt with more quickly so that key planning decisions can be finalised more quickly.
- The Government wants to speed up appeals in cases which are of national importance which are inevitably going to end up in the Supreme Court, by expanding the circumstances in which such cases may go to that court without first going to the Court of Appeal. All such cases must involve a point of law of general public importance. This change, which is being legislated in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014, currently before Parliament, will not just apply to judicial review cases but to all civil cases. It will also apply to decisions of the Upper Tribunal, the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
- The Government wants to stop JRs which are based on technical flaws in the original decision-making process, when it is ‘highly likely’ that the end result would have remained the same. This is also being legislated in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014. Judges are to refuse permission to bring a JR case where they accept that it is highly likely that the outcome would have been the same. How this will work in practice cannot at this stage be determined, but it may be predicted that judicial interpretation of the phrase ‘highly likely’ will vary from judge to judge, and this clause may itself generate a whole new area of litigation.
- The Government has decided that the details of anyone financially backing a JR must be disclosed, even if they are not a named party, so that costs can be fairly allocated. In the past backers have used individuals, and even set up new companies, to front JRs – meaning that any assessments by the court of the financial capacity of the applicant have not always been a fair representation. This change is also contained in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014.
- The Government has decided to create a presumption that third parties who apply to join in a JR case as “interveners” should normally be responsible for paying their own way – for example when a campaign group applies to become involved in a case already taking place between an individual and an authority. At present other parties in the case can be ordered to cover the legal costs of the intervener.This presumption will not apply in ‘exceptional circumstances’. In future these third parties will also have to compensate other parties if they cause them to run up greater legal bills unnecessarily. This presumption will not, however, apply where a third party is invited by the court to intervene.
- The Government has decided that the use of ‘cost capping orders’ is to be significantly reduced. At present such orders, also called protective costs orders, are used by applicants for JR to prevent them having to pay the costs of the body against whom they are bringing proceedings where they (the applicants) lose their challenge. The effect of this is the alter the normal rule that the loser pays the costs of the winning party. Since the bodies challenged by JR are public bodies, the Government argues that this imposes an unfair burden on the taxpayer who in effect has to pick up the cost. The Government plans to limit the use of protective costs orders to very exceptional cases of public importance. This is also being taken forward in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2014. (Special rules will apply in environmental cases.)
- By making changes to the rule of Court Procedure, the Government intends to make applicants who take ‘weak’ cases to a second chance hearing (known as an oral renewal) pay for some of the legal bill encountered by the other side in the process of preparing their defence more often.
- Finally it plans to ensure that grants of legal aid are limited to JR cases that ‘have merit’.
In proposing these changes the Government asserts that the principle that individuals can challenge the legality of government action is still preserved. Nonetheless, public lawyers have been vocal in their hostility to these changes.
Paying for civil justice: policy on court fees
Late in 2013, the Government announced a short consultation on fees to be charged for using the civil courts. The Government’s argument is that, at a time or austerity, those who seek to use the courts – in particular to resolve high value disputes – should pay more towards to cost of so doing.
The Government’s case was summarised thus:
“The courts play a vital role in our democracy. They provide access to justice for those who need it, help to maintain social order and support the proper functioning of the economy. They:
- deal with those accused of committing crimes, acquitting the innocent and convicting and punishing the guilty;
- provide the right environment for business and commerce to flourish, giving people the confidence to enter into business safe in the knowledge that the commercial arrangements they agree will be recognised and enforced by the courts; and
- deal with matters affecting families, from protecting children at risk of harm to making arrangements for couples who are separating.
For many years, users have been charged fees to access the civil court system, which includes all civil, family and probate jurisdictions, as well as the Court of Protection and the Court of Appeal (Civil Division).
The power to charge fees in the civil court system of England and Wales is set out in a number of pieces of legislation, including the Courts Act 2003 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. When setting fees in the civil court system, the Lord Chancellor is required to have regard to the principle that access to justice must not be denied.
In recent years, the government’s policy has been to set fees on the basis of full cost recovery: that is, the use of fee income to recover the full cost of the court system, minus the cost of the remissions system (fee waivers). However, until now, the courts have been operating at less than full cost recovery, which has diverted resources from other areas of operations.
It is critical that the courts are properly funded if they are to continue to provide access to justice whilst contributing to the ongoing development of a more efficient, modernised court service.
At the same time, the government has made reducing the fiscal deficit a top priority, in order to set the economy on course for growth. Under the terms of its Spending Review settlement, the Ministry of Justice is required to reduce its annual spending by over £2.5 billion by 2014/15. The courts, and those who use them, must make a contribution to reducing public spending.
Achieving this outcome in this environment involves some difficult choices: there is a limit to how much can be achieved by those spending cuts alone. For these reasons, the government believes that it is preferable that those who can afford to pay should contribute more to the costs of the courts, so that access to justice is preserved and the cost to the taxpayer is reduced.”
Within this context, proposals for very significant rises in court fees were floated. Some have argued that a consequence would be that high value international cases will move to other jurisdictions where fees are less. Others have argued that the proposals will have significant human rights implications.
Detailed policy announcements are anticipated later in 2014. Whatever the outcome, they will be very controversial.
See: https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/court-fees-proposals-for-reform
Reforms to Civil Justice 2013 – funding of civil litigation
Keeping track of the changes made to the Civil Justice system, in particular those which followed the reforms recommended by Lord Justice Jackson, is quite a challenge. The Ministry of Justice has provided a useful summary of the changes in the following note. There is also a link to a further website that gives more detail of the legislative basis for the changes that have been made. Links to both sites are set out below.
The main changes are:
- No win no fee Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs)remain available in civil cases, but the additional costs involved (success fee and insurance premiums) are no longer payable by the losing side.
- No win no fee Damages Based Agreements (DBAs) are available in civil litigation for the first time.
- Referral fees are banned in personal injury cases.
- The introduction of new protocols extending the Road Traffic Act personal injury scheme to £25,000.
- A new fixed recoverable costs (FRC) regime.
- Claimants’ damages are protected: the fee that a successful claimant has to pay the lawyer – the lawyer’s ‘success fee’ in CFAs, or ‘payment’ in DBAs – is capped at 25% of the damages recovered, excluding damages for future care and loss
- General damages for non-pecuniary loss such as pain, suffering and loss of amenity are increased by 10%
- A new regime of ‘qualified one way costs shifting’ (QOCS) is introduced in personal injury cases which caps the amount that claimants may have to pay to defendants. Claimants who lose, but whose claims are conducted in accordance with the rules, are protected from having to pay the defendants costs.
- A new sanction on defendants to encourage earlier settlement of claims.
In addition, the functions of the Advisory Committee on Civil Costs, which was to provide advice to the Master of the Rolls on the Guideline Hourly Rates for solicitors, was transferred to the Civil Justice Council with effect from January 2013.
Information in this blog has been adapted from http://www.justice.gov.uk/civil-justice-reforms
More details are available at http://www.justice.gov.uk/civil-justice-reforms/main-changes
Martin Partington: Introduction to the English Legal System 15th ed 2021
Oxford University Press Learning Link Resources
Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System 