Jackson: Revolution Or Evolution?

In his foreword to 'The Review of Civil Litigation Costs: Final Report 2009' (the Jackson Report) Lord Justice Jackson states simply "In some areas of civil litigation costs are disproportionate and impede access to justice. I therefore propose a coherent package of interlocking reforms, designed to control costs and promote access to justice".

A more innocuous statement would be hard to imagine. A few short years later a more dramatic result could not have been imagined.

But is this revolution or evolution?

The way in which the courts have seized on the Jackson Report and the reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules it heralded has changed the culture of litigation in a way which it was hoped the Woolf reforms would but which they singularly did not.

In his 1996 report, entitled "Access to Justice", Lord Woolf also proposed changes to civil litigation. It was that report which led to the comprehensive changes to the rules which resulted in the Green and White books being replaced by a single set of rules known as the Civil Procedure Rules. I recall being in practice at the time and writing articles and giving lectures then on the revolution which was about to take place. The aim of the Woolf reforms we all said was to improve access to justice by making legal proceedings cheaper, quicker, and easier to understand for non-lawyers. The subtext was to remove control of litigation from the lawyers and give it to the judges. So far as I could tell, though, it was business as usual. Time limits came and went and litigation was by and large conducted for the convenience of the legal professions.

Not so with the Jackson Report. As the cases which have followed it have demonstrated, the courts are saying "this time we mean it".

Two Court of Appeal decisions light the way: Mitchell and Durrant.

Mitchell

In Andrew Mitchell MP v News Group Newspapers Limited1, Mr Mitchell, formerly the Government Chief Whip in the Commons, brought a defamation action against News Group Newspapers in relation to stories they printed in connection with the so-called 'plebgate' affair.

Mr Mitchell's solicitors failed to file a cost budget in accordance with the deadline set by a previous court order. At a costs management hearing, the judge held that Mr Mitchell was to be treated as having filed a costs budget comprising only the applicable court fees (amounting to hundreds of pounds rather than the hundreds of thousands of pounds which will be the actual costs). Costs...