Asking courts for damages: Rejecting claims is not enough

It may be tempting, as they slip from memory, to forget recommendations the troika made.

One was a root-and-branch restructuring of how the legal professions operate. That issue was active before Alan Shatter left the Department of Justice but whatever zeal existed for reform subsequently wilted in the face of powerful lobbying.

That capitulation may have frustrated Mr Shatter, but he will take some small comfort in yesterday’s Court of Appeal ruling supporting judgments that the “seriously damaging” conclusions in the Guerin report were reached “in breach of fair procedures and constitutional and natural justice”.