The high price of justice

It highlights the poverty of data on which to make sound decisions. But it’s too much the creature of the legal culture it’s trying to tackle. Its proposed Civil Justice Council which would carry much of the future agenda is a specialist stakeholder body, an unlikely driver of substantial micro-economic reform. And there’s no recommendation to experiment - perhaps in some specialised court - with a truly inquisitorial process like Europe’s civil law system or our own Royal Commissions where the judge is chief investigator, not the umpire between legal opponents.

And where UK courts now charge for their time - with discretion to publicly fund to avoid hardship - the Victorian report shies away from anything so bold. I hope some enterprising State or Federal Treasurer understands what easy pickings this could make for their next razor gang.

To quote one commentator reviewing the Woolf reforms, delivering true proportionality "seems unlikely without a much more fundamental reform, such as moving away from the adversarial system”.

In fact civil law systems have problems too so they’re no panacea on their own. We need to search for a felicitous hybrid that melds the best of both systems - a subject for another column.

Meanwhile back in England, pity poor Max Mosley having a quiet S&M night with five friendly prostitutes. (He’s the high profile son of Oswald Mosley, British Fascist leader and Diana Mitford. Hitler attended their 1936 wedding.) Max was secretly videotaped by News of the World. He won £60,000 damages for invasion of privacy.

But even though the basic evidence - the tape and newspaper article - was already public, the costs of both sides still came to 14 times the damages or nearly £1 million.

So much for proportionality in post-Woolf England.

And so much for your rights to privacy if you don’t have a million odd to wager.