CAYMAN ISLANDS Law and Practice Contributed by: Sam Dawson, Peter Sherwood and Denis Olarou, Carey Olsen
ties and may then be cross-examined by the parties with leave of the court. Unless the court orders other- wise, the parties are jointly and severally responsible for the fees of the court expert. In practice, it is usually the parties rather than the court that appoint the experts. Whether appointed by the court or by the parties, an expert’s overriding duty is to help the court on matters of their expertise and this overrides any obligation the expert might have to the party instructing or paying them. 7.6 Extent to Which Hearings Are Open to the Public Trials are typically held in open court and are open to the public. Interlocutory hearings are typically held in chambers, but the court has the discretion to admit members of the public. See 1.3 Court Filings and Proceedings . 7.7 Level of Intervention by a Judge The judge does not have an inquisitorial function. The judge listens to the oral submissions of the parties, and to the testimony of witnesses and experts, con- siders all the relevant written materials, documents, and legal arguments and renders a judgment on that basis. This does not mean that a judge is required to be pas- sive during the trial. The level of intervention depends on the individual preferences of a given judge. Many judges do intervene to ask questions of advocates and even of witnesses and experts. However, while there are always exceptions to the rule, those inter- ventions are normally aimed at clarifying a particular point of evidence or argument rather than at pursuing a self-standing train of enquiry. 7.8 General Timeframes for Proceedings Many of the procedural steps, such as the filing of pleadings and the giving of discovery have standard time limits prescribed in the Grand Court Rules. How- ever, in practice, in cases of any real complexity, those time limits are almost invariably extended by agree- ment of the parties. In any event, there are many other procedural steps, such as exchange of witness state- ments, expert reports, and the like which do not have any deadlines prescribed in the Grand Court Rules.
As such, there is no one-size-fits-all timeframe for pro- ceedings. Everything hinges on the complexity of the issues, the volume of discovery, the number of wit- nesses, the need for expert evidence, the availability of the judge, and, indeed, on the parties’ respective strategies in terms of expediting or delaying resolu- tion. The most that can be said is that, even under a best- case scenario, any financial services or commercial claim of reasonable complexity and value that is commenced by writ is unlikely to get from issue of proceedings to trial quicker than nine months. A time- frame of up to two years would not be unusual for more complex claims. In extreme cases, proceedings can last for many years, but this is not common. In terms of the duration of the trial itself, again, there is no standard trial length. It depends on the number of witnesses and experts who need to be cross-exam- ined. It also depends on how much time the parties need to present their case in oral submissions and to sum up at the end, which in turn depends on the complexity of the legal and factual issues. That said, few trials would last less than a week. Any commercial trial of any complexity, and especially tri- als involving allegations of fraud or breach of fiduci- ary duty, are unlikely to take less than three weeks. In particularly complex cases, trials lasting for many weeks and sometimes months are not unusual. A recent major fraud trial in the Grand Court lasted over a year and resulted in a judgment running to over 1,000 pages.
8. Settlement 8.1 Court Approval
Except in the context of insolvency proceedings (where liquidators sometimes require court sanction for settlement), or in cases where one of the parties is not of full capacity, court approval is not needed to settle a lawsuit. 8.2 Settlement of Lawsuits and Confidentiality There is no difficulty with keeping the terms of the settlement confidential.
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