Do you get paid by the word in English Courts?

[SirFozzie]

Over a full year since the trial began, and the two teams lawyers have finished.... their opening statements.

QC completes longest speech in legal history

Wednesday May 25, 2005

Guardian

It sounds like a scene from a latter day reworking of Charles Dickens' legal satire in Bleak House. Today, lead counsel for the Bank of England will sit down after delivering what is believed to be the longest speech in British legal history.

After 119 days talking through a "core trial bundle" of 125 lever-arch files, Nicholas Stadlen QC has finished his opening comments in the Bank's defence of a £850m compensation claim by creditors to collapsed bank BCCI.

Mervyn King, the Bank's governor, this week been in the public gallery to witness the "end of the beginning" of the defence. Mr Stadlen's speech smashes a record set last year by his rival in the same case, Gordon Pollock QC.

Mr Pollock had been on his feet in court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice - the room which hosted the Hutton inquiry - for 80 days setting out the case by BCCI liquidators.

When his remarks came to a close, Mr Stadlen rose to address the judge. "After six months," he began last July, "the empire strikes back." Asked last night how many pages Mr Stadlen's opening will have run to, a spokeswoman said: "Our legal team have long since lost count."

Meanwhile, a barrier of files has built up between the legal teams - three boxes high at the outset of the case and now a five-high structure, dubbed the Berlin Wall because neither team can see each other across the top.

The trial is to resume on June 13 with the first two defence witnesses, Celtic football club chairman Brian Quinn and Peter Cooke, both former heads of banking supervision. They are expected to be cross-examined for up to three months each.

The Bank last year said the case would reach £100m if it lasts into 2006.

The liquidators's case is that 22 Bank officials, who regulated licensed banks, not only made errors and omissions, but had done so knowing depositors' life savings might be at risk.

Even before the marathon trial started, the case generated one of the longest ever disputes over document disclosure - twice being referred to the court of appeal and once to the House of Lords.

The trial shares similarities to Jarndyce and Jarndyce as portrayed by Dickens in Bleak House. It concerns a dispute over a large inheritance which drags on for years, exhausting all the funds in the estate on legal fees.