At the final count, the liquidators accused 42 Bank of England staff of dishonesty during the infamous BCCI trial. After the trial collapsed, Mr Justice Tomlinson said working out the precise number of people involved in the alleged conspiracy had become “something of a parlour game”. Here’s another one. Which of these words occurs most often in Tomlinson’s costs judgment: ludicrous, fanciful, extraordinary, implausible or hopeless?
No wonder Bank of England governor Mervyn King has called on the Government to reform civil litigation. And if the debate raging within the pages of Legal Week and on legalweek.com is anything to go by, a significant chunk of the City’s leading litigators wholeheartedly agree. Not everybody backs a full-scale inquiry. Some argue that major surgery is unnecessary because the Bank of England case was a one-off. However, it is simply not credible to argue that the system works fine, except when it comes to dealing with exceptional cases.
