Costs-capping

At a round table discussion on civil justice issues in Auckland, the Master of the Rolls said that crude costs-capping in multi-track civil litigation cases would be ‘rough justice’, but it could be the only method of reining in the expense of court-resolved disputes. He envisaged a situation where claimant lawyers would be told by the trial judges that they had a fixed budget for cost cases. For example, lawyers would be told: ‘You’ve got £20,000 to spend and that’s it.’