Check My Legal Fees News
When is it too late to demand a statutory bill from your solicitors?
Watson and Verma v Slater and Gordon UK Limited, NCN No. [2023] EWHC 1857 (SCCO)(Costs)
Solicitors are obliged to provide clients with a "statutory bill" setting out full details of what they have charged but often, especially in cases where parts of the costs are met by someone else - for example injury or negligence claims where the bulk of costs have been met by the losing party, they overlook this. Often clients are just told about the "success fee" or the shortfall in costs that was not met by the opponent, which makes it difficult to see those elements in their true context. This in turn makes it difficult for clients to see if those elements are reasonable.
In two 2023 cases that were heard together, and decided in a single judgment that seems to have fallen under the radar - we cannot see that it has been reported elsewhere - Costs Judge Rowley decided that, where the application for delivery of a bill was made less than six years after the case ended, although the court has a discretion, a bill should be delivered. Where more than six years had passed he refused the application for delivery, but did not rule out delivery in other cases of more than six years if it could be shown that there was a special reason for the delay in making the application.
If you have been involved in a case where you have had no opportunity to consider the reasonableness of your solicitors' charges because they did not deliver a bill, get in touch. If it was under 6 years ago you should be entitled to a bill, and even if more than six years have passed, the door is not closed if you can demonstrate special circumstances.
I do not think that there can be any doubt that a client is entitled to an invoice for work done as a general concept. I note that there were contractual obligations to do so in this case in addition to professional obligations.Therefore, whilst the authorities require me to exercise my discretion to require the defendant to provide its former client with a bill, it seems to me that it is a relatively low hurdle to surmount.
Costs Judge Rowley, paragraph 37
... I do not think that the absence of any complaint aids the defendant. Rather obviously, there is no bill on which a complaint could be raised. There are figures put forward in settlement correspondence but even if arithmetically correct (not always the case in my experience) the calculation may depend upon applying statutory caps etc and that would not necessarily be apparent from correspondence or telephone calls.The guidance in Ralph Hume Garry (a firm) v Gwillim [2002] EWCA Civ 1500 regarding the adequacy of bills for the purposes of assessment is echoed here in that the client needs to have sufficient information on which to take advice.Absent a bill, it is very difficult for such advice to be given.
Paragraph 39, on Slater and Gordon's argument that there had been no prior complaint from the client