This remarkable book is the first in a new series of practitioners’ works from Sweet & Maxwell, to be known as the “Litigation Library”. Your reviewer must be careful not to confer too many plaudits upon either publishers or concept itself since he has been invited to contribute to a later volume in the series. Nonetheless, just as the Common Law Library and the Property and Conveyancing Library have become established collections of practitioners’ works, so, too, the publishers hope that litigation can be treated in a similar way.

This volume, appropriately for the first in the series, covers important aspects of the early stages of litigation: indeed, in some cases before litigation has been formally commenced. Thus, it discusses not merely Mareva injunctions and Anton Piller orders, but also interlocutory injunctions more generally, and the three kinds of judgment that can be obtained without either the defendants’ consent or the matter going to trial, namely, judgment in default of notice of intention to defend, summary judgment under R.S.C., Ord. 14, and judgment in default of defence.

While these are all important matters in litigation, and while they are all matters which may be of vital importance in the early stages of litigation, it is rather stretching a point to describe the last three as “pre-emptive remedies”. The first and third are more usually seen as sanctions for failure to comply with the Rules, and the second is frequently today employed as a means of drawing out the substance of the defendant’s defence at an early stage (and, moreover, making him go on oath to verify it), thus making it difficult for him to change his story at a later stage.

It is also a curiosity that the book’s title should begin with the words “Commercial Litigation”. The principles described in the book are those which, with a very few specialized exceptions, apply generally, and it is hard to see what is added by restricting the title in this way. However, it is hardly a serious criticism of a book to say that its title does not quite accurately describe its contents.

The book is partly remarkable because of its style. There are in every chapter a series of short, rather snappy propositions, often in rather colloquial language, mixed in with a lot of questions and, more often than not, practical answers. It is a style but rarely seen in law books; the only other example which the present reviewer can recall is that of Professor Glanville Williams’ Textbook of Criminal Law. For the practitioner who is unfamiliar with any of these areas of the law, it is certainly a very welcome and helpful style. For the more experienced practitioner, it may turn out more to irritate than to assist.

Another interesting feature of the way in which the book is set out is that it includes a great many more verbatim quotations from judgments and other authorities than is usual. Plainly, this is of the greatest use for practitioners appearing in the County Courts and the District Registries of the High Court, where law reports and textbooks are often difficult to obtain. It is always very convenient to be able to push a book under the nose of the judge or registrar with the crucial sentence from the leading case neatly extracted. (One of the authors being a District Registrar, one wonders how often this has happened to him since publication!). Again, however, practitioners with better access to reports and books will always want to check the quotations against the original. This is not so much to see whether the quotations are accurate, but to see what immediately precedes or follows them, and otherwise to judge their relevance to the actual case from which they are taken; for there is always the fear that if one does not do this oneself, one’s opponent will do it and thus have the advantage in the subsequent hearing.