A TYNWALD select committee is to investigate delays in civil legal cases.
The call for a select committee inquiry was made in Tynwald by Douglas North MHK John Houghton, who claimed that delays and other difficulties in the management of civil legal proceedings regularly led to ‘many years of wasted time and unnecessary additional costs’.
He said he had no doubt that legal aid is regularly ‘squandered’ in such cases.
Advocates in civil cases funded by legal aid charge £165 per hour, but where legal work is privately funded, the hourly rate charged was ‘virtually unlimited’, the MHK told the court.
He said: ‘Costs are incurred in the legal process long before a case reaches the steps of a court and usually involves many hours of an advocate’s time at great expense.’
Mr Houghton said people faced real frustration and trauma waiting for cases to be dealt with, paying advocates tens of thousands of pounds, often leading to financial hardship and even poor health as a result. He highlighted the fact that one constituent’s legal case that had recently been settled out of court after 10 years. ‘The legal costs alone amounted to £60,000. I’m quite sure that the respondent’s costs will have amounted to a similar figure.
‘What I’m absolutely certain of is that had this case been managed in a more pro-active and efficient way, the case could have been resolved within 12 months rather than 10 years and the legal costs would have amounted to a fraction of the final total.’
Mr Houghton said that often when evidence is finally established or proved – even in the simplest of scenarios – settlement is reached out of court. ‘I’ve seen this frustrating situation repeated time and time again in dozens of cases,’ he said.
He called on a select committee to be set up to examine a number of typical cases to identify core reasons for delays and other problems.
He suggested that such a committee could also establish an acceptable route to be followed, which would ensure skeleton arguments are provided at an early stage of proceedings to decide whether or not there was a case to be answered.
Mr Houghton’s motion was carried unanimously by Tynwald, with the court voting Mr Houghton, Brenda Cannell (Douglas East) and Tony Wild MLC to be the three members to sit on the committee.