Charlie Clarke-Jervoise asks, are the courts overriding Jackson?
A recurrent theme identified during the Jackson costs review was that, while judges had an all-encompassing armoury of rules at their disposal, they did not use them sufficiently to manage cases. As a result, court deadlines were still missed, rules and orders breached and costs unnecessarily incurred.
Jackson’s good intentions
Lord Justice Jackson was determined to stop this waste of costs and court time. His new rules, which came into force on 1 April 2013, contained various measures to encourage compliance with rules and court orders. Judges are now specifically tasked with enforcing compliance and CPR 3.9 has been strengthened to discourage them from granting relief against sanctions for breaches of the rules. In addition, the new overriding objective of the CPR requires courts to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost.
A week before the reforms came into place, Lord Dyson MR (in a lecture to District Judges) explained that: “The tougher, more robust approach to rule-compliance and relief from sanctions is
