ABSTRACT
Lord Woolf indicated that striking out would be reserved for the most serious cases of breach of the rules. He suggested that failure to comply with a rule would not be enough to justify striking out without consideration of the justice of the particular case. Biguzzi was a case in point. Although the claimant was guilty of serious delay, so too was the defendant and there was no fear that the delay would mean that the case could no longer be tried fairly. To strike out in those circumstances would have allowed the defendant to obtain a procedural advantage over the claimant when in reality justice required that the case should be heard despite the delay.
