In his first post-holiday refresher article, Dominic Regan addresses the challenges of costs management
- Incurred costs represent the single greatest problem.
- The Harrison hurricane.
- Jackson’s legacy
Costs management (CM) plays an integral part in multi-track litigation. The Jackson Report of 31July 2017 backed away from a colossal extension of fixed costs. Consequently, budgeting will continue to be a regular occurrence.
It was the fervent hope of litigators that the Court of Appeal judgment in Harrison v University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust [2017] EWCA Civ 792, building upon the guidance from Merrix v Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust [2017] EWHC 346 (QB) would clarify costs management once and for all. If only. As others have eloquently explained in this journal, the Appeal Court shied away from explaining what it thought would amount to ‘good reason’ for departing from a budget.
A grenade lobbed in at the conclusion of Harrison was the declaration that proportionality could be addressed at the end of the costs assessment process. The concept of proportionality
