March 30, 2020

In a judgment handed down by the Court of Appeal earlier this month, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court, described a High Court judge’s delay in giving judgment for 22 months as “inexcusable”.

The Chancellor held that parties are entitled to receive judgments within a reasonably short period of time and, in any event, within 3 months of the end of a trial – even in long and complex cases.  In his judgment “Justice delayed is justice denied” and “… any other approach will lead to a loss of public and business confidence in our justice system”.

Litigants often expect judgments to be delivered quickly after the intensity of the trial is over.  However the waiting time for the result varies enormously in our experience – from a week to over a year – making advising our clients on what can be a critical period very difficult.  This judgment should help all businesses and advisers involved in litigation, now and in the future.

Note though that a long delay doesn’t necessarily mean you can change the result.  In this case the Court of Appeal did not order a retrial on the issue of delay because the judge had mitigated the effect of the delay by analysing the evidence on each issue in minute detail – there was no material error that occurred because of the delay.  As it happened the defendant did in fact get a retrial – but for other reasons.

While most of the UK has gone into lockdown, the courts of England and Wales continue to conduct hearings and hear cases (albeit often remotely). Inevitably though there is evidence that complex and high-profile hearings are being adjourned until the COVID-19 crisis passes. Some of the capacity released by those adjournments will, regretfully, be consumed by ill-health if members of our judiciary contract the virus, however it may be that some judges are able to catch up with their unenviable workloads and deliver judgments more quickly in cases already heard.

You can read the full judgment here. https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2020/408.html  –  paragraphs 77-84 deal with the delay in giving judgment.