Costs management powers and striking out

Question 1

What are the court powers to manage cases and costs?

Answer 1

Extend or shorten the time for compliance with any rules, PDs or court orders

Adjourn hearings or bring them forward

Require a party or their legal rep to attend court

Stay the whole or part of the proceedings or judgement either generally or until a specified event

order a party to file and serve a costs budget

Question 2

What is the court power to make an order on its own initiatve?

Answer 2

Court can provide new directions or terminate a case

If the court makes an order of its own initiative without a hearing and without giving the parties the opportunity to make representations, the court will include a statement in the order that the parties have a right to apply to set aside, stay or vary the order within a given period.

If the court does not specify a period, any application should be made within 7 days of the date on which the order was served on the party making the application.

Question 3

What is the court power to a strike out?

Answer 3

Deletion of written material from a statement of case so that it cannot be relied on in the proceedings by any party

Can delete whole statement of case so that the case is over

Can be done on an application or courts own initiative

applications should be made asap and before allocation

before court orders a strike out it may ask parties to amend statements of case or if the ground for a strike out is failure to comply with previous orders it may impose a sanction

Question 4

What are the grounds for a strike out?

Answer 4

1. the statement of case discloses no reasonable grounds for bringing or defending the claim
2. the statement of case is an abuse of the courts process or otherwise likely to obstruct the just disposal of proceedings
3. there has been a failure to comply with a rule, PD or a court order

Question 5

What does it mean to abuse a process?

Answer 5

Using a process for a purpose or in a way significantly different from its ordinary and proper use

a statement of case which discloses no reasonable ground may also be an abuse of the court’s process

Question 6

What happens after a strike out in terms of judgements?

Answer 6

Where a statement of case of a party will be struck out if the party does not comply with an order, and the statement of case is indeed struck out the other party can obtain judgement with costs by filing a request at court