Friday 25 October 2013




HOW TO DEAL WITH MORE THAN ONE DEFENDANT

I have have been assisting a client with a really complex property litigation matter where there are 18 defendants!!!!!!.  There has obviously been negligence on the part of two Solicitors and there has been a litany of mistakes leaving my client with defective title but how do you actually deal with a case where you have over 3,000 pages of evidence and 18 Defendants and how do you submit a Statement of Claim which sets out  allegations against 18 Defendants in a clear and cogent manner.

Upon instructing me my client forwarded over 400 pages of documentation with information which had to assimilated prior to my beginning to draft the statement of claim for her, 30 pages later, I have set out the Statement of Claim as follows-

1.     Details of who each and every Defendant is and their relationship to each other
2.     A full summary of the history of the case.
3.     A paragraph/paragraphs  for each Defendant particularising the case against them.

When dealing with as complex a matter as this you need to be very careful to clearly state your allegation against each Defendant individually.

This matter is further complicated because the client may need to bring a personal injury claim against one of the Defendants who attacked her.

I am not looking forward to sorting out Lists of Documents and the Statements

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