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4.6
The facets concerning active case management and express powers
The third and fourth facets can be taken together. As discussed in Section 13
below,
the Working Party is recommending the introduction of a court-determined timetable
fixed after the parties complete a questionnaire designed to enable the timetable to
take into account the reasonable wishes of the parties and the needs of the particular
case.
In giving the timetabling directions, or in dealing with any specific interlocutory
application, the court ought to have ample powers to make the orders it considers best
suited to advance the fair, expeditious and economical resolution of the dispute. If the
parties can agree reasonable directions, all the better. However, where the parties
cannot agree, and where for instance, they each put forward proposals which are
contentious, the court plainly ought to have power to reject both sides' proposals and
to make orders considered appropriate even if neither party has sought such orders. In
this sense, the court ought to engage in "active case management."
It should, however, be made clear that the Working Party is not in favour of
unwarranted proactivity by the court. The case management powers are there to curb
the excesses of the adversarial system, not to displace that system. What the Working
Party favours, reflected in Proposal 3, is to make more systematic the approach to
case management presently accepted as a matter of common law, as discussed in the
Interim Report.
Most of the powers listed in CPR 3.1 already exist, but somewhat
patchily, scattered in various provisions of the RHC or to be found in the court's
inherent jurisdiction.
Notes
At §§234 to 239.
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