Reserving the right

People involved in litigation quite often assert that they ‘reserve the right’ to do something or other – often to amend their ET1 or ET3.

This is mostly pointless. If you want to amend your ET1, you need the tribunal’s permission, and that’s just as much the case if you had earlier claimed to ‘reserve the right’ to amend it. You can’t reserve the right to do something that you need someone else’s permission to do. (If you told your child it was bed time, you wouldn’t think much of ‘Ok, but I reserve the right to stay up until midnight tomorrow night.’)

And if what you’re claiming to ‘reserve the right’ to do something you’re entitled to do without anyone else’s permission, then it’s really just a pompous way of saying that it is something that you might choose to do it at some point in the future, even though you’re not doing it now.