Harry’s litigation

[smilesy]

Harry has been mostly denied permission to increase the scope of his case against NGN. The judge has, quite rightly, allowed him to include new allegations of phone tapping and other accusations against private investigators and journalists. What he has not allowed is Harry to extend the timeline to include allegations around Diana or Meghan when she was his girlfriend. The judge also made disparaging remarks about Harry’s lawyers adding more and more detail, and going for “trophy targets”

Is Harry losing sight of what legal action should be for and becoming vexatious?

I didn't even know they could do that, SloeJelly, and thought it was up to the parties themselves what to spend

BTW it's the Mail case next - the Mirror Group (and now the Sun) have already taken place

They can spend as much as they want - the judge is just setting a cap on how much they can claim in costs from the other side if they win. Fixed costs apply as a matter of course in other tiers of the court system - the small claims track of the county court for example has caps on costs like this.

What the order actually says:

“For those unfamiliar with costs management in civil litigation, the process involves the Court in approving and setting a budget for the costs of the litigation. A party is free to exceed the budget – i.e. to spend more than the budget permits on the litigation – but s/he is unlikely to be able to recover a sum in excess of the budgeted costs if another party is ordered to pay his/her costs.”

Yet again many tthanks, @Serenster; a Telegraph link was added elsewhere explaining some of this, but with your addition I understand better now

Yes sorry everyone! I was taken by surprise at the unexpected revival of this thread and didn’t have the correct details to hand. I see the poster that didn’t like this thread has now popped up elsewhere with their two pennies worth 😆

@smilesy - that will teach me to use preview. For the avoidance of doubt I have never seen Judge Cook's jib. For which I and no doubt more he - are both heartily grateful. I also thought it looked a bit dodgy ( my post ) which is why I leapt into action - but it and you made me laugh - Thank you