The Lawyer Top 20 Cases 2020
Date: 4 February 2020
The Lawyer’s Top 20 Cases of 2020 has been revealed today and includes “the Rail Franchising Litigation”, involving Fionnuala McCredie QC, Rachael O’Hagan and Harriet di Francesco, who are acting for the Defendant (the Department for Transport) in all four claims. Details of the case can be found below.
The Rail Franchise Litigation – West Coast Trains Partnership Limited & Ors v Department for Transport & Ors
The 2019 Rail Franchising Litigation is four separate claims against the Department for Transport, which has been rolled up into one massive claim. The claims arise out of three separate rail franchise procurement competitions run by the DfT between 2017 and 2019: the East Midlands franchise, the South East franchise and the West Coast franchise. The claimants challenge their respective disqualification from the competitions for their failure to submit compliant tender bids.
The bids in question did not comply with the pensions requirements set out in the franchise documents. In addition to the disqualification challenges, two of the claimants (Arriva Rail East Midlands Limited and West Coast Trains Partnership Limited) have made further claims relating to the scoring of their bids.
The proceedings also involve concurrent Part 7 and judicial review claims – the latter has stayed pending determination of the Part 7 proceedings – as well as concurrent Court of Appeal proceedings.
The Court of Appeal proceedings concern the DfT’s appeal against the determination of the court that the claimants are not subject to the time limit for judicial review proceedings but may instead rely on the statutory six-year limitation period.
Update – June 2020
Judgment has been handed down in the rail franchising litigation, where the Secretary of State for Transport (represented by: Fionnuala McCredie QC, Rachael O’Hagan and Harriet Di Francesco) received a huge victory in defeating proceedings brought to challenge its procurement decisions in respect of the South Eastern, East Midlands and West Coast rail franchises.
The three Claimants (Arriva, Stagecoach and WCTP) issued proceedings challenging the decision of the Secretary of State to disqualify them and made other complaints about the procedure the Secretary of State had adopted. Their complaints concerned (amongst other things) the treatment of pensions. Following an expedited process, the pensions issues were heard at trial over three weeks in January and February 2020.
In a detailed judgment, Mr Justice Stuart-Smith rejected the Claimants’ claims in their entirety.
