Civil Courts Flashcards
What are the 2 courts civil cases are dealt with in?
- High Court
- County Court
What 2 judges hear cases in the County Court?
Heard in public by:
- District Judges
- Circuit Judges
What are the 3 divisions in the High Court called?
- Queen’s Bench division
- Chancery Division
- Family Division
What are the characteristics of the Queen’s Bench Division?
- Tried by a single Judge
- Juries are ONLY used for cases of fraud, libel, slander, malicious prosecution, and false imprisonment
- Biggest of the divisions
- Hears civil appeals and judicial review cases
- Deals with contract and tort cases generally over £100,000
What is the role of the Administrative Court in the Queen’s Bench Division?
It supervises the lawfulness of the conduct of national and local government, inferior courts and tribunals, and of other public bodies through judicial review
What are the characteristics of the Chancery Division?
- Tried by a single Judge
- Juries are NEVER used
- Settles disputes concerned with; insolvency, enforcement of mortgages, copyrights and patents, intellectual property
- There is a special Companies court which deals with winding up companies
What are the main jurisdictions of the County Court?
- All contract and tort cases
- All cases for the recovery of land
- Disputes over equitable matters such as trusts up to a value of £350,000
- Winner claims all costs
What are the characteristics of the Family Division?
- Heard by a single judge
- Cases involving disputes about which country’s laws should apply, international family matter cases concerning The Hague Convention
- Deals with applications for habeus corpus where a child’s liberty is involved
- 19 judges
Why should pursuing a case in court be a last resort?
- ## Can be very expensive (even more so if your case is lost as you have to pay for the other party’s costs)
What are ‘pre-action protocols’
- A list of things to be done which, if not followed correctly and required information is not given, may result in being liable for certain costs if they make a court claim
What is the purpose of ‘pre-action protocols’
- It attempts to prevent the need for so many court cases to be started
What court would a claim for £100,000 or less start in?
County Court
What court would a Personal Injury claim for £50,000 or less start in?
County Court
What court would a claim for over £100,000 start in?
High Court or County Court
What court would a Personal Injury claim for over £50,000 start in?
High Court or County Court
What track and court would a claim less than £10,000 be dealt with on?
- Small claims track
- County Court
What track and court would a Personal Injury claim under £1,000 be dealt with on?
- Small claims track
- County Court
What are three specialist individual courts in the Queen’s Bench Division and their purposes?
- Commercial Court: has special judges dealing with insurances, banking and other commercial matters
- Admiralty Court: deals with disputes at sea
- Technology and Construction Court: deals with complex building, engineering of computer litigation disputes
Characteristics of Small Claims Track
- Usually heard in private
- Parties encouraged to represent themselves
- Cannot claim the cost of using a lawyer
- Heard by District Judge
Characteristics of Fast Track cases
- Strict timetable for pre-trial procedures
- Aim to hear case within 30 weeks
- heard by Circuit Judge
- hearing limited to 1 day
- restricted number of expert witnesses
Characteristics of Multi-track cases
-judge expected to manage the case, such as:
- identifying issues at an early stage
- encouraging ADR
- fixing timetables
Lord Woolf stated that the civil justice system should…
- be just in the results it delivers
- be fair in the way it treats litigants
- offer appropriate procedures at a reasonable cost
- deal with cases at a reasonable speed
- be understandable by those who use it
What were the main proposals by Lord Briggs in 2016 for reform of the Civil Procedure Rules?
- there should be an out-of-hours private mediation service in the County Court
- an online court should be set up
What are the two routes of appeal from the County Court?
- District Judge to Circuit Judge (remain in County Court)
-Circuit Judge to High Court Judge
No appeal may be made to the CoA unless the CoA considers that…
a) the appeal would raise an important point of principle or practice, or
b) there is another compelling reason for the CoA to hear it
what is ‘leapfrog’?
Appeal direct to the Supreme Court from High Court.
Usually cases of national importance
Advantages of using civil courts
- Impartial Judge
- Decisions can be enforced through the courts
- There are appeal routes
- It is possible to get legal aid
