Dr Rachel Segal of St John’s Chambers has published the 2023 edition of the Denton Resource – an invaluable time-saving research aid for civil and family practitioners dealing with applications for relief from sanctions.
This latest edition of The Denton Resource includes higher authorities reported up to and including 31 December 2022 with a bumper crop of fresh disasters arising from procedural errors, requiring application of the three stages set out in Denton v White [2014] EWCA Civ 906.
This publication provides brief, easily searchable summaries of each relevant authority in thematic sections and will help the reader decide whether to delve deeper into the full judgment. The Denton Resource now has a broad following – including judges, solicitors, barristers, legal academics and Bar students and each recent edition has been downloaded thousands of times.
Each summary in turn touches upon the defaulting party’s breach(es), the court’s application of the Denton criteria, and the outcome of the application for relief from sanction(s). With the exception of a very small handful of recent cases, the summaries have been produced from the full judgment in addition to consideration of relevant legal commentary online (from legal bloggers or indeed from counsel involved in the cases included herein).
As in previous years, there are several new judgments in respect of witness statements (largely failures to serve on time and non-compliance with the Rules) and pleadings (with a proliferation of cases where claimant solicitors have fallen foul of the Rules relating to valid service of the Claim Form or Particulars of Claim, and to the limited scope of 3.10 or 3.9 in remedying such defaults). The latter seems to have become a common trope which is clearly tripping up both claimant and defendant solicitors, and with an extra layer of cases arising from use (or not) of the Damages Claim Portal. Again there are some decisions reported that some will no doubt consider draconian in their outcome and even perhaps verging on the unjust (see, for example the latest iteration of R (On the Application of The Good Law Project) v The Secretary of State for Social Care [2022] EWCA Civ 35 in the Pleadings section).
On another note, there is also a recent high court decision in respect of the proper approach to determining applications under CPR 13.3 (to set aside default judgments) which have, over the years, become accepted as tacitly constituting an application for relief from sanctions under CPR 3.9. However, the judgment in C v D [2022] 5 WLUK 99 (also in the Pleadings section) cites and considers in an interesting way the two alternative lines of jurisprudence on that point to reach a different conclusion.
About Rachel:
Rachel is ranked as a leading junior in The Legal 500 for both personal injury and clinical negligence. She advises and represents parties on both sides of relief from sanctions applications across the spectrum of civil litigation, and delivers training on the topic. Rachel’s clinical negligence practice includes many cases involving delayed diagnosis and treatment of cancers (including osteosarcoma, colorectal, endometrial, cervical). She also has a particular interest in breast cancer cases. Her practice also spans specialisms including ophthalmology, gastrointestinal and colorectal surgery, and obstetrics. In personal injury, Rachel is instructed in a range of multi-track RTA, Highways Act, employers’ liability and public liability matters. Rachel was second junior to Christopher Sharp KC and Anna Symington in a recent catastrophic brain injury RTA case, assisting with a complex multi-million pound Schedule. Read more here.