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11 October 2018 / Dr Mark Friston
Issue: 7812 / Categories: Features
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Book review: Civil Costs

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“It is a book that could be cited in court with confidence”

  • Author: Senior Master Peter Hurst
  • Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell
  • ISBN: 9780414069183
  • Price: £298

I am honoured to review the sixth edition of Peter Hurst’s book Civil Costs (published by Sweet & Maxwell at a price of £229 in hardback, or £298 in hardback plus eBook). This is a well-established book that was first published as long ago as 1995. The last edition stated the law as it was on 1 April 2013; as one would expect, the new edition has been thoroughly updated since then to deal with issues such as cost management, qualified one-way costs shifting, relief from sanctions, etc. The law is stated as of 1 May 2018.

In some ways, this book is a ‘life cycle edition’—that being an updated edition of an established work—but it is much more than that. Two factors have conspired to make this so.

  • First, the changes in the law since 2013 have been so great that much of the
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