In a judgment handed down this morning, the Commercial Court has struck out a £58 million claim in unlawful means conspiracy brought against the defendants to previous (discontinued) litigation against the same claimants, their solicitors and QC. 

In her excoriating judgment in King v Stiefel [2021] EWHC 1045 (Comm) - a rare example of a court striking out a fraud claim - Mrs Justice Cockerill DBE addressed a number of significant legal and procedural issues.  These include whether the CPR require a defendant to file a defence before applying for summary judgment (the Judge found that they don’t), the purposes and requirements of a pleading (in particular when pleading fraud), that abuse of process can arise where the relevant issue could have been raised during a costs assessment in relation to previous proceedings and that (save in relation to actions for negligence) an advocate’s immunity from suit has not been abolished.  Daniel Lightman QC and Charlotte Beynon represented five of the ten defendants who successfully applied to strike out and for summary judgment.

Please click here to view the judgment.