The latest case on solicitors deducting costs from damages in fixed costs cases is causing a stir, but Rob Marven QC and Ben Williams QC of 4 New Square argue that it is a decision on unusual facts, and that some key issues went unexplored.

Where the law governing a contract containing an arbitration agreement differs from the law of the nominated “seat” of the arbitration, which law – absent any express choice – governs the arbitration agreement itself? That was the question that the Supreme Court had to grapple with in Enka Insaat Ve Sanayi AS v. OOO Insurance Company Chubb [2020] UKSC 38, in which judgment was handed down on 9 October 2020. George Spalton and Ian McDonald of 4 New Square consider the decision.

Ben Williams QC, Rob Marven QC and Benjie Fowler consider the changes to cost budgeting introduced in October 2020. Another year, another set of changes to the cost budgeting regime. The focus is on varying the budget – not only have the rules changed, there is a new precedent form to get to grips with, Precedent T.

Is it easier to get a costs order against a claimant’s litigation friend or a defendant’s litigation friend? And are there analogies to be drawn with the non-party costs or wasted costs jurisdictions? Paul Parker discusses the recent Court of Appeal decision in Glover v Barker (2020).

One of the cases mentioned in Murray Rosen QC’s Podcast on “Art Disputes in Times of Pandemic” (14 July 2020) was SatFinance Investment Ltd v Philbrick & Others [2020] EHHC 1261 (Ch), a decision of Chief Master Briggs delivered in the English High Court on 26 May 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown. The claims in that case centred on the wonderful 1982 painting Humidity by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the New York artist who died tragically aged only 27 in 1988. The Claimant alleged a double fraud – as regards the true price of the painting in which it had invested and as regards its unauthorised use as loan security. It failed in its attempt to serve English proceedings out of the jurisdiction on the Fourth Defendant lender in New York, because England was not the appropriate forum - the English “anchor” defendants having disappeared so that there would be no trial here as against them. A key point was the relevance of the facts known by the time of the application to set aside service, to the position when permission to serve out had initially been granted.