LAWYERS were in mournful mood last week when both sides in the Collins Stewart Tullett v Financial Times agreed to settle the libel battle over the way the newspaper reported allegations made by a former employee of the company. The settlement, agreed after 14 hours of discussion, left some “gutted” at the lost prospect of a trial as the climax of more than two years’ work — even if it was the most expedient decision for the newspaper. It agreed to pay £300,000 damages — but the real sting in the tail was the £2.2 million costs run by up by Collins’ lawyers, Schillings. The costs of the FT, represented by Farrers, were reportedly two thirds of this. “The costs have set a record,” one media lawyer mused last week. “They are simply staggering.”
THE Lord Chief Justice sat on a case in the House of Lords last week — a corporation tax case — his first since he took up his post as Britain’s most senior judge. The reason is that, like his predecessor, Lord Woolf, he is also a law lord: he was appointed to the Lords in 1999, before becoming Master of the Rolls. “He is a member so he is asked to sit if his expertise would help in a particular case and his timetable permits it,” a judicial spokesman said.
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ART galleries are all the rage for lawyers’ reception areas so it’s not surprising that the Bar Council’s new building in Holburn boasts an exhibition where works include striking pieces by Lana Locke, a self-trained sculptor. Locke, whose “two obsessional subjects” are classical myth and portrait heads, was one of the discoveries of the “gallery”, says James Woolf, assistant executive secretary for legal services at the Bar Council, in Counsel magazine. She is a secretary at the Bar Council.
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SO farewell Irene Dodgson. The head of group and public relations for the Institute of Legal Executives has decided to call it a day in March. Dodgson, who has worked tirelessly to put Ilex on the map, said her options had been to see through the Clementi reforms or go now and let someone else see through the changes. She’s past retirement age and opted for the latter. Not least of the temptations was the chance to spend more time in the West Country. “I made more friends there at my occasional weekend and holiday place than I did at my permanent home in St Albans,” she said.
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LORD ACKNER has returned to the fray. The retired law lord has tabled a question, to be answered today, asking about the future of Hampshire under proposals to merge police forces. Hampshire is arguably the jewel in the Western Circuit but there’s now concern in legal circles that it might be made part of the South Eastern Circuit. Ackner says that the Lord Chancellor made a commitment at a dinner to the Western circuiteers never to move Hampshire, “so long as he was Lord Chancellor”. Ackner says: “I want to know from him if that assurance still stands.”