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The comments deriding LIPs for not engaging a lawyer are unhelpful and will only bring the profession further into disrepute. The claimant's biggest mistake was, as some have noted, leaving service until the last minute.

To my mind, the core problem is the CPR, which started out as a slim volume promoted by Lord Woolf, and has expanded into an unwieldy and barely coherent behemoth. One of the original supposed aims was to get away from tactical and procedural skirmishes, but if anything the CPR has made these worse, since the stakes are now higher.

I often had LiPs on the other side pre CPR, and while it was somewhat frustrating that judges too often allowed the LiPs to get away with a flagrant disregard for rules, court orders, time limits, at least cases were looked at individually and a reasoned decision made by a judge. I have more rarely litigated with LiPs under the CPR, and since the advent of email: the main problem with the CPR and email is that (in my admittedly limited experience) LiPs rarely seem to serve everything they should, and it isn't always possible to make out what is missing, or work out that something is missing at all.

I suppose the decision is right, because the SC by a majority said so, but it doesn't help notions of justice. As others have also noted, perhaps the CPR will be amended to provide some relief - or better still simple clarity - for LiPs.