“Innocent parties” in litigation may now find themselves penalised in costs if they do not actively police defaulting parties
In re W – all the parties’ solicitors were penalised for their collective failure to ensure that case management decisions were adhered to, resulting in the waste of scarce court time.
Crucially, all the parties collectively failed to adequately check the documents that were disclosed by third parties. Had they done so, they would have realised that important documents were missing.
Such failures can be punished by wasted costs orders.
