This Court of Appeal decision concerned the circumstances in which the award to a Claimant who beats its own Part 36 Offer of some or all of the specified relief under CPR 36.17 may be considered to be unjust.
This Court of Appeal decision emphasised Clarke LJ’s rejection in Excalibur Ventures LLC v Texas Keystone Inc. [2015] EWHC 566 (Comm) of the proposition that “the test for the sum to award was the “irreducible minimum””, and Leggatt LJ’s decision in Dana Gas v Dana Gas Sudek [2018] EWHC 332 (Comm) that “A logical approach is to start by estimating the amount of costs likely to be recovered on a detailed assessment and then to discount this figure by an appropriate margin to allow for error in the estimation.”
In this short judgment, Master James (costs judge) dealt with an application by the paying party for disallowance of the Claimant’s costs on grounds of unreasonable and improper conduct.
A solicitor who wishes to rely on having been given informed consent for the purposes of CPR 46.9(2) must not only point to a written agreement which meets the requirements of the rule, but must also show that his client gave informed consent to that agreement insofar as it permitted payment to the solicitor of an amount of costs greater than that which the client could have recovered from another party to the proceedings. For this purpose, the solicitor must show that he made sufficient disclosure to the client.
“In my judgment, the production of the Deed was a change in circumstances which justified discontinuing her claims to a beneficial interest in the Property of her and/or the deceased…. the change in circumstances was brought about by unreasonable behaviour by the defendants. The defendants’ solicitors did not properly engage with pre-action correspondence. Although the available evidence indicates that their clients had the Deed, having been sent the relevant files by Booth & Co, they did not produce a copy of it until 18 months after the claimant’s initial request. Even now, no explanation has been given as to why the Deed was not produced in September 2016, what steps were taken by the first defendant to look for it, what enquiries he made and searches he carried out and when and where the Deed was found.”
Following trial of a dispute about covenants in contracts, under which the claimant sought payment from the defendant, the Judge declared that on a true interpretation of the covenants no liability for payment had yet arisen.
In addition to the “interpretation issue” the defendants also run a series of other defences, including fraudulent misrepresentation, conspiracy, estoppel, title to sue, and allegations that the original sales had been part of an unauthorised collective investment scheme.
These other defences failed.
“D8 could have insisted on taking the matter to a trial on the issue of costs, yet when the Judge asked whether that would be required, D8, as with C, agreed to a summary determination of the position. Thus, the deprivation of a trial on the remaining issue of costs was caused proximately by D8 not demanding directions for a trial. That is not a criticism of D8’s position generally, but it is an answer to the narrow point that D8 was deprived of a trial as a result of the form of the Part 36 offer.”
Do I need to enter into a new CFA when my client loses capacity or when new Litigation Friend is appointed?
In our article How Relevant Is The SCCO Guide To Hourly Rates we looked at three cases in which two High Court Judges and the Senior Costs Judge independently commented on the passage of time since the guideline rates were last updated in 2010 and, consequentially, their relevance on detailed and summary assessments being conducted in 2020.
The Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 3) Rules 2020 and the 122nd Practice Direction Update come into effect on 1 October 2020… the most notable change is the introduction of the new formal procedure for varying your costs budget and imposition of a mandatory duty on parties to do so where there is a significant development in the litigation.