SPLIT TRIALS: AN EXTINCT SPECIES?

In Howard & Ors v Chelsea Yacht And Boat Company Limited (1) & The Port of London Authority (2)  [2018] EWHC 1118 (Ch)

a Chancery Division Master refused to order the trial of a preliminary issue and considered a number of Court of Appeal authorities on the point, and these are set out in paragraphs 19 to 21 of the judgment.

Any given case will be fact sensitive, but this case is in line with a recent trend of refusing split trials.

The general view is that split trials result in further delay and increased costs and have been described by the Court of Appeal as “offering a siren song to the parties”.

The starting point now appears to be that the court will refuse such an application unless there are powerful arguments for allowing it.

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