Newspapers will be spared the “crippling” legal costs they feared would have a “chilling” effect on freedom of expression under election pledges made by the Conservatives.

The party’s manifesto says that it will repeal a measure that would have forced newspapers that did not sign up to an approved regulator to pay their opponents’ costs in libel and privacy cases, even if they won the case.

The Conservatives have also pledged to ditch the second part of the Leveson inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, and to keep Channel 4 in public ownership but to relocate it out of London.

Newspapers had widely condemned section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2014, which is on the statute book but not yet enacted, because of the punitive deterrent costs that it would inflict. However, the manifesto published yesterday pledges to repeal the section, accepting that “if enacted, [it] would force media organisations to become members of a flawed regulatory system or risk having to pay the legal costs of both sides in libel and privacy cases, even if they win”.

The Society of Editors “wholeheartedly” welcomed the commitment not to bring the section into force, saying that many newspapers had made clear such costs orders would have a “seriously chilling effect” on their work. It said: “To put it simply, they would be less inclined to pursue investigations in the public interest when the risk of crippling legal costs would be increased.”

Independent public advocate for disaster cases proposed

An independent public advocate will be created by the Conservatives if they win the election to act for bereaved families after disasters and support them at inquests, the party announced in its manifesto.

Theresa May’s party will also impose a system of specialist training for publicly-funded advocates acting in cases involving allegations of serious sexual offences. The move will be designed to ensure that alleged victims and witness in those cases are handled sensitively. The Tory manifesto said the plans for a public advocate came out of the gruelling experiences of the families of the victims of the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.

“To ensure that the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families over the last 20 years is not repeated,” the manifesto says, “we will introduce an independent public advocate, who will act for bereaved families after a public disaster and support them public inquests.”

In other areas around the law, the party committed to extending the scope of the unduly lenient sentence scheme “so a wider range of sentences can be challenged”.

The Tories would also “push forward” with plans to crack down on hate crimes committed on the basis of religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

A multimillionaire businessman and his wife involved in a £50 million divorce dispute have been criticised by a judge for spending more than £2.5 million on lawyers.

Lord Justice Moylan said that Christakis Christoforou’s evidence on “contentious issues” had been “largely based on an indifference to the truth”. The judge criticised Mr Christoforou, 66, who set up a property business in the mid-1980s, in a ruling published after earlier hearings in the family division of the High Court in London.

He said that he had been asked to rule on the division of a £50 million fortune after the breakdown of Christoforou’s 34-year marriage to Ibtissam Ali Christoforou, 63. Lord Justice Moylan said he had made decisions on a number of issues but had yet to make a final order.

He said that Mrs Christoforou’s evidence had been “largely reliable”. While she had “undoubtedly acted tactically since the marriage broke down, including by not always giving an accurate presentation . . . I found her generally to be an honest witness”.

But it was the costs that particularly attracted the judge’s attention. He said Mrs Christoforou had spent £1.4 million on lawyers and Mr Christoforou £1.3 million. The judge commented: “Despite some of the complexities of this case, to have spent a total of £2.7 million is an astonishing sum which is wholly disproportionate to the issues.”

Insurance companies have “spent years under-compensating” injury victims while they should have been preparing for reform, a leading claimant lawyer said yesterday.

Brett Dixon, the new president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, accused insurers of being “hysterical” in their response to the government’s recent decision to update the formula for calculating compensation for life-changing injuries. “While insurers should have been preparing for the reform which they knew was coming, many of them were resting on their laurels, reaping the benefits of a rate which was too low, while people with life-changing injuries were under-compensated,” Dixon told the association’s meeting in Cardiff.

“Were there any stories about insurers going out of business because they could no longer make ends meet? Of course not,” said Dixon. “Was the idea that injured people are somehow responsible for the setting of premiums accepted by some opinion formers? Of course it was.”

Dixon, a lawyer with Smith Jones Solicitors in Burnley and Kenilworth, went on to call for “fairness, accountability and the need to treat injured people with dignity”. He said: “A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members. So we had all better sit up, take notice and try to be better, fairer human beings.”

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A City of London lawyer has paid her window cleaner cousin £130,000 to stop him from suing her for allegedly depriving him of his inheritance.

Jannan Crozier, a partner at the London office of one of the world’s biggest law firms, Baker McKenzie, agreed an out of court settlement with her cousin, Tommy Crozier, to settle a long-running family dispute.

Tommy Crozier, who is 43, alleged that his 37-year-old solicitor cousin – who specialises in mergers and acquisitions deals for exclusive hotels and resorts – failed to pay back a loan his father had made to her to buy a flat in London.

Thomas Crozier, Tommy’s father and Jannan’s uncle, is understood to have earned a small fortune in the 1980s from his business selling hotdogs and burgers outside the Old Trafford and Maine Road football grounds in Manchester. Tommy Crozier alleged that his father loaned the lawyer, who joined the leading law firm in 2005 after reading law at Manchester University and the College of Law in Chester, more than £100,000 to buy a flat in Canary Wharf.

According to court documents, Tommy Crozier claimed that the understanding was that his cousin would pay back the loan in monthly instalments of £1,000. But when his father died intestate in 2010, Tommy Crozier said that he discovered that his cousin had cancelled the standing order, leaving the bulk of the alleged loan unpaid.

In a witnesses statement, Jannan Crozier claimed that the money was a gift and not a loan. However, she acknowledged that she did borrow an additional £13,000 to cover stamp duty, land tax and legal fees.

According to a report on the legal community website RollonFriday, the Baker McKenzie lawyer agreed in February to pay her cousin £130,000 to settle the claim and avoid a court battle. Details of the settlement have just emerged. And it was also claimed that a restraining order had been placed on Tommy Crozier after he allegedly harassed his cousin, the website said. Neither Jannan Crozier nor Baker McKenzie would comment.

However, Richard Harrison of the law firm Laytons, which acted for Jannan Crozier, said: “This is a long-running family dispute with a history of serious harassment of Ms Crozier, which culminated in a restraining order being made against Thomas Crozier, which is still in place. In that context, Ms Crozier defended this case vigorously and stands by her defence.

"Ms Crozier was committed to taking the matter to trial but made a part 36 offer [to settle before trial] in order to protect herself against costs that were likely to be irrecoverable and which the claimant chose to accept rather than go to trial.”

A London business group has become the latest to launch an arbitration service as the UK capital continues to battle to retain its leading position as a venue for alternative dispute resolution.

On Thursday the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry announced its plan to offer its members and other businesses an in-house service rather than acting as a referrer, which it had done before. The service, called the London Chamber of Arbitration, is billed as providing a range of mediation and alternative dispute resolution services. Organisers said they would announce a panel of arbitrators, which will consist of former members of the judiciary and current senior practitioners, soon.

Colin Stanbridge, the chamber of commerce’s chief executive, said he hoped the venture “will be an attractive facility not only to businesses in London but those throughout the UK and overseas”.

The service enters a highly competitive field, not only within London, where several arbitration centres exist, but also internationally, with competition in Paris, Geneva, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. But Robert Griffiths, QC, head of Mondial Chambers in London, was upbeat at the launch. “The London Chamber of Arbitration will provide a bespoke service to those who do business in and with London and will enhance London’s preeminent status as an arbitration centre,” he predicted.

Leigh Day solicitor says 'bribe' reference in email was not meant literally– Law Gazette

Off-shore law firm barred from launching in Bermuda – The Lawyer

Young defendants ‘should not be denied trial by jury’ – Legal Voice

Correction

In The Brief on May 17, 2017, we reported on a Court of Appeal case heard by Lord Justice Irwin, Lady Justice Gloster and Lord Justice Underhill. In that report, we incorrectly referred to James Duffy, QC, when we meant Jim Duffy, a junior barrister at One Crown Office Row.