Strictly speaking not a Monday smile, but for me the idea conjures up wonderful imagery! 🙂

So… this is actually a Term Focus post, on the practice of Hot Tubbing.

Hot tubbing or “concurrent evidence”, is a method of giving evidence where  [..] experts give evidence simultaneously and the court or tribunal chairs a discussion between them.  Hot tubbing is regularly practised in […] international arbitration proceedings […]. This has the potential not only to save costs but to improve the quality of court decision making.¹

It was introduced in the UK fairly recently with the Jackson reforms (see in particular this speech by Lord Dyson given in Jersey in May 2015 (pp. 15-17), following a pilot in Manchester.

The UK’s Law Gazette published an article last year on how this procedure affects judges, comparing it to their role in civil law systems such as France.

Here is a useful summary about its relevance to patent cases, which also includes a clear overview of the advantages and disadvantages of hot tubbing in general, albeit focusing on the Australian jurisdiction.

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You might also like this post on Hub-and-spoke conspiracy.

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¹ By Justine Ash, see here and 2013 update here.