George McDonald and Tim Chelmick discuss the Court of Appeal decision in Zuberi v Lexlaw Limited which has made damages-based agreements in England and Wales far more attractive to solicitors and heralds a new dawn for contingency arrangements

The core issues considered in the most important professional negligence cases of 2020 cover five main themes, as follows:

The practical consequences of the broad policy-based test laid down in recent years to determine when a claimant’s claim is “tainted” by his wrongdoing;
When it is an abuse of process to attack the outcome of previous proceedings in a subsequent claim;
Challenges posed by the separate legal personalities of a company and its shareholders, creditors or other associates;
The need for more certainty in the area of vicarious liability; and
The extent to which the filtering mechanism based on scope of duty can cut down damages in a claim framed in breach of fiduciary duty rather than negligence.

In this review of the year, Helen Evans, Ben Smiley, Pippa Manby, and Ian McDonald of 4 New Square explain what the 2020 cases tell us, how the various strands of development interact, and what to watch out for as we go into 2021.

Following the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement (“TCA”) and the laying before Parliament of the Civil, Criminal and Family Justice (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, the key points for jurisdiction over EU-27 Defendants after the end of the transition period are now clear:

A video lecture by Sir Rupert Jackson at Melbourne University Law School on 8 December 2020.

Melody Ihuoma contributes to an article by Halima Dikko of LexisNexis on Stoffel v Grodona. Please click here to read the article in full.