The Scottish Government is using the reforms to civil justice in order to create a ‘litigation industry’ that would see multinationals from the around the world using the country as their preferred destination for legal action according to one of Scotland’s leading lawyers.
Patrick McGuire, partner at Thompson’s Solicitors, claims the desire to see only cases involving sums of £150,000 and above in the Court of Session – as suggested in Lord Gill’s review into civil justice – will reserve Scotland’s highest civil court for big business.
He says:
“When you start to scratch the surface, you come to see what the motives are for which type of cases ought to remain in the Court of Session and when that policy decision is made as to what should say then some mechanism needs to be used to get everything else out and I think on the balance and exercise that is where the £150,000 [limit] comes from.
“I think for me personally the motives are fairly clear. On the political side of things, with Mr MacAskill, there is a very clear role to make the Court of Session the forum of choice from around the world irrespective of their contact with Scotland or not, to come here to litigate their cases.
“If you like, big business will use the Cayman Islands for tax, Switzerland for banking and Scotland for litigation. But is that really what we in Scotland want? I think that is the political motive and everything else flows from that.”
McGuire will be speaking at the Holyrood magazine conference on civil justice law reform on Tuesday March 23.
Book here: http://civiljustice.holyrood.com/
