Solicitors’ Assumption of Responsibility: Miller v Irwin Mitchell LLP [2023] EWCA Civ 53
There was good news for travel solicitors this week, with the Court of Appeal giving judgment for the solicitors in Miller v Irwin Mitchell.
This week’s Dekagram examines what happens when rules change: that transitional period between one set of rules and another, when no one is quite sure what’s happening. We seem to have had quite a few of those recently; just as we were getting over the horrors of the Withdrawal Act, along came the changes to the Fixed Recoverable Costs regime – changes which, we remind readers, remain in a state of flux, notwithstanding that the new regime is now in force.
Res Judicata and Rule Changes
A range of issues are thrown up in a work accident claim where either the claimant or defendant becomes insolvent. Less common, but it does come up in work accident claims is the insolvency of the claimant employee either before the claim is issued, during the claim or after judgment/ settlement and some implications on certain procedures and orders such as PPO. More commonly faced issues are the insolvency of the employer as an individual or a company and often in occupational illness claims a long dissolved company.
As well as the Deka Legal Bake, last week witnessed the publication of the updated ASHE and a further judgment on the subject of jurisdiction, which seems to be a growth area in satellite litigation, perhaps unsurprisingly given the effect of Exit Day.
In the recent case of Baker v Financial Conduct Authority (Re Ipagoo LLP) [2022] EWCA Civ 302 the Court of Appeal has given useful guidance on the interaction of the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (EMRs), which implemented the EU Electronic Money Directive (EMD), with the Insolvency Act 1986 (the 1986 Act), in respect of the status and basis of the Asset Pool, and the waterfall of payments where there is a distribution from an insolvent estate.
The 1st April 2022 marks another notable event in the return to ‘normality’, this time for creditors, as restrictions on the issuing of Winding Up Petitions are lifted.
For the first time since restrictions were introduced in June 2020 by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA 2020) (unusually with retrospective applicability to Winding Up Petitions issued after 27 April 2020), creditors are no longer subject to restrictions on when a Winding Up Petition can be issued.
On 25 January 2022 the FCA published its proposals on companies that seek to manage their liabilities through the use of schemes of arrangement and restructure plans available under company law and voluntary arrangements available in insolvency law.
The FCA are seeking views on these proposals which represent a clear flexing of the FCA’s muscles in the interest of protecting customers and will clearly be of interest to company directors, their accountants and lawyers and insolvency practitioners.
This year’s 1 Chancery Lane Autumn Bumper Briefing takes as its theme – what else? – Covid-19 and its consequences. Some two years after the virus was first identified, and just over eighteen months since the first lockdown began, the courts are starting to deal with cases arising out of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it.
From 1 October 2021, the temporary restrictions in Schedule 10 of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA) are being replaced[1].
These changes lift the current restrictions on issuing winding up petitions, and replaces them with less stringent and more refined restrictions which are due to remain in place until 31 March 2022.
On 24 March 2021 regulations were laid before parliament to further extend the protections introduced under the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA). CIGA originally introduced a number of measures designed to protect companies and directors who were struggling during the pandemic. These measures had originally been implemented to expire at the end of September 2020 but had been subject to two further extensions previously, and have now been extended further.