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Accessible legal tips, know-how and news for anyone with a complaint or legal issue from Stephen Gold, author of The Return of Breaking Law, the book

Thursday 21 July 2016

KEEP OUT!

Can you be thrown out of court for any part of the civil claim you are bringing or defending?

Certainly, if you disrupt the hearing by unruly behaviour or may be by bringing out a copy of Breaking Law. Otherwise, you have a fundamental right to see and hear all the evidence which is seen and heard by the judge. The Court of Appeal ruled on 14 July 2016 that one of two claimants should not have been excluded from court while the other was giving evidence. Exclusion meant that they did not have a clue what the the other had said when they returned to give their own evidence.

The two were after compensation for a road accident but the insurers on the other side were alleging that the claim was fraudulent.

Despite the trial judge's wrong call, the Cout of Appeal ruled that, taken as a whole, the proceedings had not been unfair. Incidentally, both claimants lost although the trial judge's finding of fraud was set aside.