Abstract
In delivering the Gerard Brennan lecture in 2011, The Hon John Doyle AC, Chief Justice of South Australia, a person not given to exaggeration, said this: ‘I believe that, during the time of the next generation of legal practitioners, those now being admitted to practice, civil litigation as we know it in the higher courts will come to an end’.1 And he subtitled his lecture ‘the demise of civil litigation’. There is no doubt that the cost of a trial of an action in the Supreme Court, even for a successful party, is, in most cases, beyond the means of the average citizen, or even of a small company. For a losing party of average means that is almost certainly the case. And there is nearly always a risk, for either party, of doing worse by judgment than that party expects. This has been the position now for a considerable time.