COMMENT FOR THE DAY. #89 EPISODE 4

You announce the Board’s decision.
“Appellants application for 30min preparation time + 1.30hrs for Reply Submission is refused. The Board has considered all relevant circumstances. There is no need for an adjournment to another date. It is now 16.40. The Board will reconvene at 17.00 + appellants will have 30 minutes to make reply submissions.
Any questions from the Board will follow at the end of the appellant’s reply submissions which are to be limited to any new points in respondents’ defence. The Board considers that its decision is fair in all the circumstances”

The advocate is unhappy. “The action on which you have embarked amounts to a serious irregularity that will create a substantial injustice for the appellant + lead, inevitably, to an application to the Commercial Court”.

You listen. You take a full note. Board members ditto.
You then announce that the Board will reconvene at 17.00 to hear the appellant’s reply submissions.
Be disciplined + correct. No harshness/bad feeling.  Be a Chair.
Agree in the retiring room the wording of the contemporaneous note + record the application + Board’s decision in the Award.