Hong Kong reforms

David Smyth and Peter Coles cast an eye over the legal challenges facing insurers

ON March 19 Hong Kong’s chief justice endorsed important changes to the way litigation is conducted in the territory by accepting 150 recommendations in the final report of the working party on civil justice reform. This report recommends many amendments to procedural rules and practices designed to improve the legal system’s cost-effectiveness, make it less complex and allow greater access to justice. But it does not recommend an entirely new code of civil procedure along the lines of the Woolf reforms (CPR) in England and Wales.