Butterworths Commercial Court and Arbitration Pleadings

Commercial Court and Arbitration Pleadings provides detailed, expert guidance on the techniques and skills that can be learnt and built upon by all Barristers and Solicitor Advocates involved in this specialised area of law. Step-by-step the authors explain the applicable rules, advise on the art of good pleading and provide precedents for common forms of pleadings, applications and other formal documents most likely to be encountered in the commercial field. This book will provide you with: detailed guidance for preparing a lucid and effective commercial court or arbitration pleading; a summary of the substantive law the pleader must bear in mind; a precedent based on stated facts, showing the form the relevant pleading should take.

EXPERT GUIDANCE FOR THE ART OF GOOD PLEADING

This book stands on its own because it is clearly an expert guide to the techniques, rules, language and drafts which form what we all consider to be the ‘art’ of good pleading. We can, (at least some of us), probably remember the Bar School drafting courses with a certain amount of despair. However, all that has changed with the arrival of this book by Charles Macdonald QC and Chirag Karia.

So, what does this book actually do? As the editors explain, it “is intended to be, not a work of scholarship, but a practical guide to those who wish to know how to plead a case in the Commercial court or in a City of London commercial arbitration”. The editors see their readership as wide to include pupil barristers, trainee solicitors, younger practitioners in the relevant fields, and practitioners in the Commercial Court generally.

WORD OF ADVICE

A most sensible suggestion is made at the outset: “it is probably true to say that the only way to learn to plead is to do it”. So, it is a bit like advocacy then! The editors do say in their preface that the various sets of precedents set out are prefaced by assumed facts whilst traditional precedent books leave such facts to be deduced. I do agree that it assists to set out some assumed facts and, as a result, it makes the work all the more valuable as a contribution to the range of books of precedents. In fact, it is a refreshing change to see this because books of precedents tend (unfairly) to reflect the stuffy, old-fashioned and ponderous nature of ‘the law’ as it then was.

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

The book is split into three parts, and each chapter has named persons as the individual chapter editors. Part I covers the overall introduction and then we move to Part II which is entitled ‘Commercial Court Pleadings’. There are ten chapters in Part II covering:

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• Shipping – Charterparties/Bills of Lading/Marine Insurance
• Carriage of Goods by Road and Air
• Commercial Insurance – Non Marine
• Reinsurance
• Banking
• International Trade and Sale of Goods
• Agency
• Professional Negligence

Moving to the final Part III, which is entitled ‘Commercial Court: Other Documents’, the editors have included what can be described as all the bits that cannot find another home! These include:

• Appeals
• Conflict of Laws and Stays
• Search and Freezing Orders
• Arbitration Applications
• Case Memorandum and List of Issues
• Offers to Settle and Payments into Court

The individual sub-parts of each chapter have been assigned to a total of thirty-three specialists in their own fields. Each of the main chapters starts off with a heading entitled ‘Law’ and gives a short introduction covering the relevant aspects but the point is made that the introduction is not intended to be exhaustive or comprehensive. In fact, this is a welcome approach because the memory can fade sometimes so it is useful to have this refresher. The pleadings set out in each case follow the standard format to be expected and it is clearly useful to have assumed facts.