Civil Procedure Rules
The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) were introduced in 1997 as per the Civil Procedure Act 1997[1] by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee and are the rules of civil procedure used by the Court of Appeal, High Court of Justice, and County Courts in civil cases in England and Wales. They apply to all cases commenced after 26 April 1999, and largely replace the Rules of the Supreme Court and the County Court Rules. The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 is the statutory instrument listing the rules.[2]
The CPR were designed to improve access to justice by making legal proceedings cheaper, quicker, and easier to understand for non-lawyers. As a consequence of this, many former, older legal terms were replaced with ‘plain English’ equivalents, such as "claimant" for "plaintiff" and "witness summons" for "subpoena".
Unlike the previous rules of civil procedure, the CPR commence with a statement of their "overriding objective", both to aid in the application of specific provisions and to guide behaviour where no specific rule applies.
Tracks[edit]
Small Claims Track[edit]
Claims with a value of not more than £10,000 (the amount increased on 1 April 2013) are usually allocated to the Small Claims Track unless: the amount claimed for pain, suffering, and loss of amenity[12] is more than £1,000.00;[13] or the cost of the repairs or other work to residential premises claimed against the landlord by a tenant is estimated to be more than £1,000 – whether or not they are also seeking another remedy – or the financial value of any claim in addition to those repairs is more than £1,000.[14]
A claim for a remedy for harassment or unlawful eviction relating to residential premises will not be allocated to the Small Claims Track even if it meets the financial limits.[15]
Fast Track[edit]
Claims with a financial value of no more than £25,000 (£15,000 for claims issued before 6 April 2009) for which the Small Claims Track is not the normal track are usually allocated to the Fast Track[16] unless: the trial is likely to last for more than one day;[17] oral expert evidence at trial will be in more than two fields; or there will be more than one expert per party in each field.[18]
Changes to legal terminology[edit]
England and Wales began to diverge from the common law (and from other common law jurisdictions) with the Rules of the Supreme Court in 1883, which replaced the traditional "complaint" and "answer" with the "statement of claim" and "defence".
The CPR went much further by replacing several dozen traditional legal terms. For example, the "writ of summons" and the "statement of claim" were replaced, respectively, with "claim form" and "particulars of claim".
The CPR implemented a new system of radically different legal terminology in order to bring plain English to the legal system of England and Wales.[22] This was intended to help laypersons comprehend legal terms more easily and to make the judicial process faster and less expensive.[22] However, Bryan A. Garner has noted that the new system seems to have replaced "old jargon with new, even less-comprehensible jargon".[23]