Police have issued a harassment warning to a high profile barrister amid allegations that she waged a campaign of online bullying, abuse and “death threats” against a law student and another lawyer.

Barbara Hewson, who attracted controversy in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal when she called for the age of sexual consent to be dramatically lowered, is the subject of mounting complaints to the Bar’s regulator.

At least three complaints have been lodged with the Bar Standards Board, The Times has learnt. It has also emerged that Hewson, a Court of Protection and human rights specialist, has left her chambers, 1 Gray’s Inn Square in London, within the past few weeks.

The set — which is also home to the high profile civil liberties lawyer, Michael Mansfield, QC — would not comment on her departure, apart from saying she had left “for personal reasons”.

In a 22-page complaint to the Bar’s watchdog, seen by The Times, Mehul Desai, a student at Nottingham University Law School, claimed that he had “received death threats and abuse over the phone” from Hewson. The student alleged that the lawyer pestered him so incessantly with nuisance phone calls that he was left “feeling frightened, alarmed, distressed and anxious”.

The dispute allegedly grew out of Desai’s support for Sarah Phillimore, a family law barrister at St John’s Chambers in Bristol. Phillimore is a well-known campaigner on child protection issues who has frequently crossed swords with Hewson on social media over their opinions on investigations into alleged historical child abuse cases.

Desai alleges that Hewson contacted him in an attempt to obtain “dirt” on the barrister. When the law student refused to agree, he claims he was subjected to a growing barrage of online and other abuse.

Phillimore told The Times that “following months of serious and frightening harassment” by Hewson, she registered a complaint with the police earlier this year. Officers from Scotland Yard issued Hewson with a harassment warning notice, officially referred to as a police information notice, she said.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed to The Times that on March 1 “a 55-year-old woman was issued a harassment warning. The victim was informed of this outcome”. The warnings have no legal standing and do not establish wrongdoing, but are used by police as a response to allegations of low-level harassment.

Hewson did not respond to requests for comment. There has been no finding against Hewson, and the BSB said it would not comment “as to whether or not individual barristers are the subject of a complaint or a disciplinary investigation”. It would also not comment on whether a police harassment warning would automatically trigger disciplinary proceedings against a barrister.

Newspapers' freedom to publish suffered a blow yesterday when Britain’s highest court endorsed ​rules that allow “exorbitant” levels of legal costs to be awarded against them in defamation cases.

Three of the biggest newspaper organisations had challenged rules that they described as a "costs bonanza" for lawyers and that have a "chilling effect" on freedom of expression and investigative journalism.

At a hearing earlier this year they told the Supreme Court that the regime of "no win, no fee" arrangements, by which lawyers can double their fees if they win a libel or privacy action, is a "legal casino" for lawyers and can stifle serious journalism.

However, five justices — led by Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the court’s president — unanimously rejected the challenges in separate cases brought by Times Newspapers, the Mirror Group and Associated Newspapers.

Lord Neuberger said that to refuse to allow claimants who have pursued actions against the newspapers to recover additional costs would "infringe their rights", because it would amount to changing the rules retroactively under which they sued, and would "undermine the rule of law".

Each newspaper publisher ​ now faces substantial costs, which in the case of MGN amounts to a total of more than £7.5 million. Lord Neuberger said that claimants who had sued the three newspaper groups also had a right the recover their costs under the prevailing system and "had a legitimate expectation that the statute would not be retrospectively repealed or otherwise invalidated to their detriment”.

Times Newspapers was appealing over an order to pay about £1.7 million in legal fees relating to an article that reported a police officer was facing investigation for taking bribes. The officer, Gary Flood, who was cleared by the investigation, sued The Times. Although the newspaper successfully argued that it had a public interest defence in relation to most of the publications.

Flood won substantial damages for a part of his claim that related to publication on the internet after he was cleared of the internal police investigation. As well as contesting liability for success fees, The Times argued that it should not have to pay the entirety of Flood's costs — inflated by the up 100 per cent uplift allowed in such cases — because it won a significant part of the case.

The parents of Charlie Gard plan to appeal against a judge’s ruling that doctors could stop life-support treatment for their gravely ill baby against their wishes, their lawyer has said.

Specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London say that the eight-month-old baby, who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage, should move to a palliative care unit.

His parents Chris Gard, a postman, and Connie Yates, who are both in their early thirties, want to be allowed to take him to a hospital in the US for treatment.
Yesterday Mr Justice Francis ruled with the "heaviest of hearts" that life-support treatment should stop after analysing evidence at a hearing in the family division of the High Court in London and visiting Charlie in hospital.

Charlie, who was born on August 4, 2016, has a form of mitochondrial disease, a condition which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage. His parents launched an appeal on the Gofundme website two months ago, saying they needed £1.2 million to fund the US treatment. They reached their target on Sunday after more than 80,000 people donated.

After hearing the decision, Pravin Fernando, a barrister at Serjeants’ Inn in London, told the judge that the couple wanted to challenge his ruling in the Court of Appeal. The family’s solicitor, Laura Hobey-Hamsher of the London law firm Bindmans, said outside court that the couple would have three weeks to submit a challenge.

She added that the parents were “struggling to understand why the court has not at least given Charlie the chance of treatment in America”. Lawyers representing Great Ormond Street told the court that treatment would continue until appeal decisions had been made.

Measures to curb the rocketing price of litigation have backfired, lawyers claim, arguing that being forced to comply with unrealistic deadlines has pushed up costs.

A poll of litigation solicitors at Britain’s 200 largest law firms found that 65 per cent of personal injury specialists and 60 per cent of commercial litigators viewed the costs management process as a failure.

But despite their dislike of the requirements, which were introduced in the county court and High Court in England and Wales four years ago, a significant majority of lawyers prefer the system to the proposed alternative. Some 90 per cent of personal injury lawyers and nearly 80 per cent of commercial litigators preferred costs management to a system of fixed recoverable costs.

However, the figures altered considerably when solicitors were asked to anticipate the views of their clients. Some 67 per cent of personal injury solicitors said their clients would prefer costs management, while the majority, 57 per cent of commercial litigators anticipated that their clients would prefer fixed recoverable costs.

“The majority of solicitors feel there is a lack of consistency in the judicial approach towards costs management,” Phil Bradbury, of Just Costs Solicitors, the firm that commissioned the research, said.

“The lack of guidance as to what proportionate costs means and the fact many judges are still unclear on what basis they are supposed to review the parties’ budgets only serves to heighten their concerns.

“The introduction of costs management has only increased the cost of litigation in some litigators’ eyes. The need to comply with deadlines, or having to apply for an extension before the deadline expires, is seen as an accumulation to the cost of litigation, especially when the principal claim remains their main focus of litigation.”

Arbitration in Hong Kong is the cheapest in the world, research published yesterday claimed.

Disputes were settled for the lowest cost in the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre when compared with the other main players, including the London Court of International Arbitration, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and arbitration handled by the International Chamber of Commerce.

However, according to a report from the New York law firm White & Case, London appears to be competing with the other centres in the costs market. For claims of less than $1 million, its costs are comparable with those at the ICC and in Singapore.

And for claims involving more than £1 million, London is more competitive. Its costs are comparable with those in Hong Kong, but lower than those at the ICC and in Singapore. The report points to recently released figures from the Hong Kong centre that show mean total costs of an arbitration being $65,721, compared with $192,000 in London.

The survey also found that disputing parties are increasingly opting for a single arbitrator in an effort to cut costs and simplify proceedings. Of those bringing cases to the London centre in 2015, 52 per cent chose sole arbitrators, with the remaining 48 per cent opting for three-member panels. That was a significant increase on the 28 per cent that plumped for a sole member in a comparable survey in 2014.

However, the increasing preference for sole arbitrators more widely was less pronounced. According to the survey — conducted for White & Case — of the 1,313 appointments and confirmations made by the International Chamber of Commerce in 2015, 19 per cent involved sole arbitrators, only two points up on the previous year.

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