Telephone hearings

Heyward v Plymouth Hospital NHS Trust CA SJ 1 July

The practice of a case management conference by telephone where appropriate was commendable, but it was important that the judge conducting the conference should have available the appropriate documents in a form the parties to the proceedings were able to duplicate so that the submissions were readily intelligible. The shortcomings in the present case showed the importance of the introduction of electronic case files into the procedure, which the Courts Service was not yet in a position to fund.