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Section 13: Case management timetabling and milestones
Proposal 18
A rule should be adopted requiring the parties each to fill in and file a questionnaire shortly
after the defendant serves its defence, providing the court with specified items of information
to enable it to assess the procedural needs of the case with a view to fixing a timetable and
giving appropriate directions for the conduct of the case including directions fixing
milestones in the progress of the case which are, save in the most exceptional circumstances,
immovable.
Proposal 19
Rules should be adopted which give the court maximum flexibility when devising timetables
and directions and which also encourage the parties to make reasonable procedural
agreements without requiring reference to the court unless such agreements may impinge
upon specified milestone events in the prescribed timetable.
Procedures should be introduced for establishing a court-determined timetable which takes
into account the reasonable wishes of the parties and the needs of the particular case.
As the first part of the summons for directions procedure, the parties should be required (i) to
complete a questionnaire giving specified information and estimates concerning the case
with a view to facilitating case management by the court; and (ii) to propose directions and a
timetable to be ordered by the court, preferably put forward by agreement amongst the
parties, but with the court affording unrepresented litigants leeway in their observance of
these requirements.
Unless it appears to the court that a hearing of the summons for directions is in any event
desirable, the court ought to make orders nisi giving such directions and fixing such
timetable for the proceedings as it thinks fit in the light of the questionnaire and without a
hearing. However, any party who objects to one or more of the directions given, should be
entitled to have the summons for directions called on for a hearing.
Where, at the summons for directions stage, the court's view is that a case management
conference is desirable, the court should fix a timetable up to the date of the case
management conference, that date constituting the first milestone, with further milestones to
be fixed when the case management conference is held.
A date for a pre-trial review and the trial date or the trial period should be fixed as milestone
dates either at the summons for directions or at any case management conference held.
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