Accordingly, the court may order a trial of preliminary issues, a split trial or a trial of test cases. However, parties should be aware that multiple trials do have the potential to lead to delay, higher costs and repetition.
In representative proceedings, it has been suggested that the court may also order bifurcation, whereby common issues of law or fact are dealt with by way of a claim for a declaration, with issues of liability or quantum dealt with separately by way of individual proceedings, or on an alternative group basis. However, although the Supreme Court appeared to approve of this approach in Lloyd v Google, in Wirral Council v Reckitt and Indivior the Commercial Court refused to permit a securities claim to proceed by way of a bifurcated process, concluding that allowing the representative action to proceed would be unfair, unjust and contrary to the overriding objective.