Law v Liverpool City Council

In the course of writing a forthcoming Update: Costs for the Solicitors Journal, concerning naming the wrong defendant in a CFA, I was considering the case of Law v Liverpool City Council [2005] EWHC 90020 (Costs) which deals with this issue. Although unreported, this case usually has the date of judgment being recorded as 10 May 2005 (including on Bailii and in the Senior Court Costs Office’s case summary No 23 of 2007). This is hardly surprising as that is the date that appears on the approved judgment itself.

However, the judgment itself, in turn, refers to the case of Brierley v Prescott [2006] EWHC 90062 (Costs). Having appeared for the defendant in that matter I can confidently state that the date of that decision was 2006. So how did His Honour Judge Stewart QC manage to comment on a 2006 case in 2005?

I’m sure there’s a hilarious joke about time travel to be made there.

I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.

Oh, no. Wait…

How about:

On the back of this decision, the judge was elevated to a Lord. A Time Lord.

No? Oh, well. Please yourselves. 
 


3 thoughts on “Law v Liverpool City Council

  1. As the judgment itself clearly states in the first line, it is an appeal from a DJ decision in Feb 2006. The appeal decision has been misstated as being May 2005 rather than May 2006.

    It isn’t widely appreciated that the neutral citation numbers “EWHC 900XX (Costs)” which BAILII gives to costs decisions is something done by BAILII itself. The citations are not official, and have no status outside BAILII – I suppose that such a citation is needed by its software. Judgments of masters and county court judges are not usually given official neutral citations. It will be noted that BAILII had had to describe this as a High Court case (“EWHC”) when it is in fact a county court decision.

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