
Snippets from The Reduced Law Dictionary, by Roderick Ramage
Amendment colours
The Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 17 r2.4 directs that ‘The order of colours to be used for successive amendments is: (1) red, (2) green, (3) violet and (4) yellow’. The same order for successive amendments to non-contentious documents is followed by solicitors, who make amendments in longhand. By the time that one reaches yellow, the document is usually so incomprehensible that one must retype or rewrite it. Microsoft Word’s advanced track changes options offers all the colours you want, but not four users each with a separate colour. It is, however, improbable that Microsoft had ever heard of the CPR.
Bailiffs—guilty until proved innocent
A power to recover money by taking control and selling goods is exercisable only in accordance with the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 sch12: s62. Para 10 says ‘an enforcement agent (aka bailiff) may take control of goods only if they are goods of the debtor’. According to the MoJ’s Taking Control of Goods (April 2014) para 67, ‘enforcement agents should not take control or remove goods