The new Chairman of the Bar Council must surely remember the events surrounding the introduction of the rules of disclosure of reports in personal injury actions.

They should fortify him in his efforts to have canceled, or substantially amended, the new rule of the Superior Courts in Statutory Instrument No. 12 of 2008 as suggested HERE.

The practicality of changing the effect of Statutory Instrument 12 of 2008 is real and the example is found in the recent past.

The Superior Courts Rules Committee introduced an amendment to the rules in 1997, as set out HERE.

Very promptly, the amendment was revoked and replaced by a new rule as set out HERE. This was discussed in the Supreme Court in Payne v Shovlin [2005] IESC.

The Court accepted that the effect of the 1997 rule on disclosure was too broad and the new, replacement rule was of a narrower ambit.

In short, when the bad effects of a rule or rule change is manifest the Rules Committee is capable of responding positively.

Go to it, Mr. Chairman!

(PS: Issue a new Press Release; your website shows Turlough O’Donnell as the Chairman, according to the latest Press Release on the topic; cancel the old Press Release).

The result of the Bar Council Elections is in (or out).

The new Chairman should immediately address two issues. I referred to one previously HERE (depose the Attorney General, for reasons of self-respect, from his “position” as “leader of the Irish Bar”).

The other is urgent. It is the need to campaign to reverse a new rule of the Superior Courts. The Superior Courts Rules committee has introduced the following paragraph into Order 99, Rule 1 of the Rules of the Superior Courts (S.I. 12 of 2008).

(4A) The High Court or the Supreme Court, upon determining any interlocutory application, shall make an award of costs save where it is not possible justly to adjudicate upon liability for costs on the basis of the interlocutory application.”;

The effect of this change is to tie the hands of the High Court or the Supreme Court on the issue of the payment of costs on interlocutory applications. Very often their costs are made “costs in the cause”. This means that the responsibility for the payment of the costs will lie with the unsuccessful litigant. Or, the costs are “reserved”. This means that the issue of responsibility for the payment of such costs will, or may, be determined by the trial judge at the hearing of the action.

The effect of the new rule is to favour wealthy litigants by raising the stakes for litigants who are not wealthy.

It is not enough now to be strategically superior; it is essential to be tactically perfect.

I am reminded of the Komodo Dragon. It has toxic saliva so powerful it needs just to strike and bite sufficient to break the skin of its victim, which, fleeing the attack, is followed by the Dragon at a leisurely pace in the certainty that the victim will succumb to the poison (a biological poison) and be eaten by the Dragon, alive.

Should we not prefer people to monsters?