A judge sitting in the High Court has used a new ruling to make a wider plea about the multitude of authorities submitted by the parties.

Stephen Houseman KC, sitting in Invest Bank PSC v El-Husseini & Ors, added a postscript in which he expressed concern at the ‘proliferation of cited authorities’ in hearings in the commercial court.

He suggested it was not reasonable to expect a judge in a three-day hearing to assimilate more than 150 authorities. This list included the Denton judgment as well as Court of Appeal authorities considering its application.

Houseman said practitioners ‘can assume that part-time and full-time judges are aware of these fundamental principles by now’.

The judge added: ‘Greater discipline is required by advocates to limit the citation of authority to what is strictly necessary and indeed permissible. This in turn involves an understanding on the part of court users and other practitioners.

‘Time estimates are required to assume that the court will be taken through authorities relied upon during the hearing. I shudder to think how long that would have taken in this instance without my injunction to counsel to address me only on those authorities they felt were absolutely necessary for me to understand.

‘I doubt the transcriber would have appreciated the speed at which it would have been done if covering any more of the cited authorities, or that I would have gained a meaningful understanding of each case during such forensic speed-dating exercise. Far too many authorities were cited.’

Houseman said he had chosen to allow the trial to go ahead and kept it within the agreed estimate, but he noted he could have just as easily adjourned it with adverse costs orders and a directions that it be re-listed, causing to be delayed until 2025. The hearing itself was to establish whether the claimant had statutory capacity to pursue claims against all or some of the eight defendants. The volume of authorities was blamed on the material change in UAE law which was relevant to the defendants’ position.

 

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