Editorial Private nuisance: Article 6 ECHR and the costs conundrum

摘要

The headline from these two cases will be obvious.The Supreme Court in Coventry seems inclined to relieve the defendant of some of the impact of a regime that would have enabled Mrs Austin to start proceedings. However; under the new regime, Mrs Austin and others in her position cannot obtain insurance to enable them to bring proceedings; nor, in a typical case such as Mrs Austin's, can they be awarded protective costs orders in their favour No-one could possibly be inclined to advocate a return to the uncontrollable costs of the pre-2013 regime, but equally there needs to be some way of enabling Mrs Austin and others to bring a 'seriously arguable' case with some certainty as to the worst outcome if they lose.