Lawyers’ aggression ‘like going back to the 1980s’, says judge

A High Court judge has been highly critical of a legal team for adopting an overly-aggressive approach and said lawyers bore the main responsibility for the destruction of relevant records.

His Honour Paul Matthews began his judgment in Car-Wizard Ltd v Vixen Surface Treatments Ltd by expressing his regret that at every stage in the litigation there had been so little co-operation between the parties.

The commercial dispute between a small vehicle repair business and supplier featuring representation on both sides by experienced solicitors and counsel.

Matthews said: ‘The result has been a longer drawn-out, far more aggressive and certainly more expensive lawyer-led dispute resolution process than I have experienced for a long time. It has been like going back in time to when I first started in practice in the 1980s. This is highly regrettable, particularly in these days when judicial resources are scarce, and the emphasis must be on the efficient resolution of disputes.’

The judge recorded that the main responsibility for this lay with the defendant and its legal team. National firm Knights had acted for the defendant.

He said that ‘every possible point’ had been taken in the defence of the claim, very many of them either bad or irrelevant. Although the claim was issued in December 2023, the trial did not take place until nearly two years later, in the autumn of 2025, which was ‘unusually slow’ and ‘largely due to the defendant’s aggressive approach’.

In addition, the judge explained that during cross-examination at trial it emerged that many of the defendant’s relevant records had been destroyed after the dispute arose, although this was not mentioned in the disclosure reports.

‘The defendants’ lawyers must bear the main responsibility for that,’ added Matthews. ‘Cross-examination also elicited the fact that the defendant’s engineering expert had revised his opinion after someone in the defendant’s legal team had suggested to him that in light of what happened at trial he reconsider his report. Frankly, this is not the kind of conduct which I expect in conducting litigation in 2026 under the CPR.’

In the case itself, the judge approved the claimants’ revised budget and rejected the defendant’s objections over whether the claimant had beaten their Part 36 offer. He ruled that the defendant’s conduct had been sufficiently out of the norm to justify an award of costs on the indemnity basis.

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for Knights said: 'We respect the court and the judicial process. We note the observations made in the judgment which are flatly denied, and will be raised through the appropriate professional channels. It would therefore not be appropriate to comment further.'