The Court of Appeal has confirmed that a Damages-Based Agreement, or DBA, can include a clause which entitles the legal representative to payment on a time cost basis if the DBA is terminated before the conclusion of the litigation: Zuberi v Lexlaw Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 16. DBAs, otherwise known as contingency fees, are a … Read more

The Supreme Court has today handed down judgment in the Covid-19 Business Interruption insurance test case of The Financial Conduct Authority v Arch and Others.  Herbert Smith Freehills acted for the FCA who advanced the claim for policyholders. Read more

With the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, and the lack of clarity as to whether the EU will consent to the UK’s accession to the Lugano Convention, attention is focused more than ever on the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005. Hague 2005 is however subject to a … Read more

The Court of Appeal has held that parties seeking to introduce a new claim after the expiry of the relevant limitation period cannot rely on previously struck out pleadings in order to demonstrate that the new claim arose out of substantially the same facts: Libyan Investment Authority v King [2020] EWCA Civ 1690. CPR 17.4(2) … Read more

In the latest decision in the long-running Franked Investment Income (“FII”) Group Litigation, the Supreme Court has held that, for a claim to recover money paid under a mistake of law, the statutory limitation period begins to run when a claimant could with reasonable diligence have discovered the mistake, in the sense of recognising that … Read more

The High Court has held that a party who stated in documentation before the court that a particular issue had not been discussed with its lawyers, in order to deny an assertion made by its opponent, had not thereby waived privilege as there had been no voluntary disclosure: PJSC Tatneft v Bogolyubov [2020] EWHC 3225 … Read more

The Court of Appeal has held that an asymmetric jurisdiction clause is an exclusive jurisdiction clause for the purposes of the recast Brussels Regulation. The English court was therefore entitled to continue with its proceedings where it was the chosen court but proceedings had been commenced earlier in Germany: Etihad Airways PJSC v Lucas Flother … Read more

2020 will be, for many of us, a year we are keen to forget, as we look forward to 2021 with hope that the Covid-19 vaccines will bring life back to something approaching normality – though perhaps with some trepidation at the uncertainties for business following on from the end of the Brexit implementation period, … Read more