Shipping should regard the new rules as a window of opportunity, and a chance to reduce the cost of claims handling. Parties to disputes will doubtless learn more about the new rules as they go along, but the time for study is over. Battle is about to be joined in what should be a leaner, more equitable and more affordable dispute resolution process. It is to be hoped that it will ensure greater access to justice, and not just greater access to dispute resolution. By any other name SOME familiar terms have disappeared along with the advent of Lord Woolf's changes.
Plaintiffs are now to be referred to as claimants in the English courts.
The writ becomes the claim form. No argument there. Discovery becomes disclosure. I don't care. A pleading becomes a statement of case.