I scan the Times Law Reports occasionally, looking out for decisions relevant to case management. What I am after is a Court of Appeal decision upholding an order from, say, a Mercantile Court, where the judge has hacked down the issues list, or struck out a statement of case for failure to comply with the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR or made a draconian case management order with costs assessed immediately and payable in 14 days.

I have not seen one yet, which means either that the judges are not making the orders (they will, they will) or that they are properly hanging their orders on at least two of the overriding objective factors, causing counsel to advise that a robust Court of Appeal is unlikely to interfere. It might, of course, be that everyone is now complying with that hidden but important Practice Direction.

A report in yesterday’s Times caught my eye however. Headed “Lords’ reminder to counsel” its opening paragraph said that the House of Lords reminded counsel of the rule, which seemed to be less well-known than it had been, “as to their appearance in the House”.

Good God, are standards slipping even at the Bar? I pictured barristers turning up in front of their Lordships tieless, unshaven and wearing Bermuda shorts. Perhaps some had appeared with trouser creases less than crisply parallel and cuffs just a fraction too long. Perhaps – surely not – there had been a spate of counsel in brown shoes, or slip-on shoes, or sporting single cuffs with buttons.

Reading on, I found that it was not appearance in the sense of how they turned up which was causing concern, but whether they turned up at all. The offence is not that they were dressing like builders but that they were double-booking themselves when they had a fixed date in their Lordships’ House, just like builders do at your house or mine.

I will keep looking for the management appeals. If you hear of one such as I have described above or the reverse – where a judge has failed to make any such order when a party thought he should have done – please let me know.

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