Kenton v Slee Blackwell [2023] EWHC 2613 (SCCO)

November 6, 2023February 6, 2024 ujjainimistryLeave a comment

Senior Costs Judge Gordon-Saker found that providing a ‘hopelessly inaccurate estimate’ and an inadequate risk assessment regarding a success fee will result in the claim for costs against the client being decreased significantly.

Background

In Kenton v Slee Blackwell [2023] EWHC 2613 (SCCO), the Claimant sued her previous solicitors who had acted for her in a professional negligence claim against another firm, ABC. They had entered into a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) in May 2018, with a success fee of 80% if the claim concluded before trial and 90% if it concluded at trial. After mediation, ABC agreed to pay Kenton’s costs in the sum of £138,000.

Slee Blackwell, subsequently, sent Ms. Kenton a bill which amounted to approximately £342,000, where approximately £90,000was payable to the Claimant after damages.

The Defendant’s did not adduce their own evidence or cross-examine Ms Kenton’s witness statement.

But this raised numerous concerns and questions by the Claimant as she had relied on the estimates provided by the Defendant’s, as well as the success fee outlined in the CFA. Judge Gordon-Saker addresses the two key issues of: reliance on costs estimates, and the risk assessment in creating the success fee. This blog will explore his reasoning and decision in turn.

Costs Estimate

Ms Kenton clearly relied on the estimates provided by the Defendant; it was one of the reaons why, she decided to proceed with them to act on her behalf. Slee Blackwell’s estimates outlined as follows:

£5,000 to £20,000 if settlement was reached before issuing of proceedings.
or
£30,000 to £50,000 if the case went to a contested hearing.

In addition to the above estimates, Slee Blackwell’s Ms Slade also explained how she was ‘yet to have a single case where [her] basic fees have been £100k […] the closest is £85k with a fully contested trial’. So, it was expected, from the Claimant’s point of view, that fees would not exceed this, especially since the case settled prior trial.

Unfortunately, the reliance on the estimates by the Claimant was heavily disputed by the Defendants, claiming that it would have been ‘unreasonable’ as it would not have accounted for the ‘unanticipated work required in considering the documents from ABC’. They argued that Ms Kenton did not complain about the original estimates after the costs exceeded £100k as per the costs spreadsheets that were sent to her 5 times over the period of the claim.

However, Judge Gordon-Saker found in the Claimant’s favour that the estimate was ‘inadequate’ and ‘a reasonable estimate of profit costs would have been about £50,000 before issue of proceedings’– not between £5,000 and £20,000. The Defendant’s did not provide a reason as to why the costs far exceeded the estimate and the Judge deemed it would be ‘reasonably expected for [the client] to pay a figure close to the estimate upon which she relied’’. He also added how the Claimant did not have the opportunity to ‘do something different’ as she had already signed the CFA and knew she would ultimately be liable if she tried to terminate it- ‘she could not escape it’. Therefore, £40,000 was the sum that the Claimant was expected to pay.

Success Fee

A risk assessment was carried out by the Defendant’s, which justified the success fees of 80% or 90% (as explained above). Mr Brighton, for the Defendant’s, argued to the Court that the success fees were reasonable and in accordance with the uncertainties involved and was given to the Claimant in an informed manner, to which she had approved. The Claimant contended this line of reasoning by stating these fees were unreasonably high.

Judge Gordon-Saker also agreed with the Claimants in this issue in that the risk assessment was ‘lacking’ and, therefore, there was no informed approval of the Claimant in accordance with CPR 46.9 (3) and (4). He points to paragraph 37 from Herbert v HH Law Ltd [2019] EWCA Civ 527 where informed approval means “that the approval was given following a full and fair explanation to the client” and Judge Gordon-Saker clearly states that the assessment was not a ‘proper assessment of the prospects of successes.’ The risk assessment that would be deemed reasonable and realistic would have generated a success fee of 50% of the basic charges; which was the final decision of the Court in this matter.

Summary

This case emphasises the importance of informed communication with the client, alongside the significance of correctly estimating figures and costs as the figures produced and presented to the client could be the last factor that contributes to the client’s decision in proceeding with the case. Solicitor’s should set out all estimates and charges in a clear format and any risk assessment’s should be undertaken with all factors of the case considered.

Ujjaini Mistry is a Paralegal in Clarion’s Costs and Litigation Funding Team. You can contact her at ujjaini.mistry@clarionsolicitors.com or on 07436033368.

Should the additional liabilities be included in the budget to allow the proportionality test to be applied correctly?

August 15, 2016April 13, 2021 Andrew McAulayLeave a comment

Following the case of BNM v MGN Ltd (3rd June 2016) where it was found that the after the event insurance should be taken into account when assessing whether the costs were reasonable and proportionate, should the additional liabilities now be included in the budget to ensure that the proportionality test is applied properly at the budget stage?

According to the recent decision in Various Claimants v MGN Ltd (21^st July 2016) the Defendant accepted that under CPR, the Claimants are not obliged to disclose the amount of the success fee or ATE insurance as this could reveal the prospects of success. However, they referred to the case of BNM v MGN Ltd (3^rd June 2016) and argued that to enable the court to assess the reasonableness of the budget and apply the proportionality test then the additional liabilities now needed to be included in the budget.

Despite the court recognising that by taking into account the additional liabilities this allows a prospective view of proportionality, rather than a retrospective view, thus fulfilling the courts costs management duties, the court disagreed with the Defendant, referring to the provisions within the CPR, specifically the precedent H form and the precedent H guidance notes, concluding as follows:

I do not consider that the apparent change in the approach to proportionality on assessments (if there is one) means that there should be a change to the approach on the occasion of budgeting. The reasons for this are based on both the provisions of the rules and the Practice Direction and on the practicalities.

The provisions for costs budgeting are to be found in Part II of CPR 3. The procedures are dealt with in Practice Direction 3E. Paragraph 2(a) requires the court to have regard to the overriding objective and paragraph 6(a) provides:

“Unless the court otherwise orders, a budget must be in the form of Precedent H annexed to this Practice Direction.”

The first page of that precedent contains a summary which is amplified in the following pages. Below the summaries of costs under various headings there is included the following wording:

“This estimate excludes VAT (if applicable), success fees and ATE insurance premiums (if applicable), costs of detailed assessment, costs of any appeals, costs of enforcing any judgment and [complete as appropriate]”

Therefore, in light of the emerging case law on proportionality, the approach to the inclusion of additional liabilities remain the same and should be excluded from the precedent H.

You can find out more about our services here or you can contact the Costs and Litigation Funding team at CivilCosts@clarionsolicitors.com

Coventry v Lawrence – The Outcome

July 23, 2015July 23, 2015 Leave a comment

It’s a case that everyone has being waiting for and it proved to be fairly anti-climatic in the end. For those who want to refresh their memories we wrote an extensive article on the background of the Coventry case which you can read by clicking here.

The full Judgment of Coventry -v- Lawrence [2015] UKSC 50 was published yesterday confirmed that nothing will change and that the recovery of additional liabilities did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights. The Supreme Court commented as follows:

“The scheme as a whole was a rational and coherent scheme for providing access to justice to those to whom it would probably otherwise have been denied. It was subject to certain safeguards. The government was entitled to a considerable area of discretionary judgment in choosing the scheme that it considered would strike the right balance between the interests of appellants and respondents whilst at the same time securing access to justice to those who would previously have qualified for legal aid. It had to find a solution to the problem created by the withdrawal of legal aid. The government has now produced three different schemes. Each was produced after wide consultation. Each has generated considerable criticism. As already indicated, once civil legal aid was constrained to the extent that it was in 1999, it became impossible to come up with a solution which would meet with universal approval. This is relevant to the question whether the 1999 Act scheme struck a fair balance between the interests of different litigants.”

This should put to bed any arguments over the recoverability of any success fee / ATE Premium on pre-Jackson cases. The outcome shouldn’t come as a big surprise to lawyers. Notably Lord Mance stated as follows;

In the above circumstances, I reject the respondents’ challenge to the system of costs whereby they are potentially liable in respect of success fees agreed and ATE premium incurred by the appellants. The position must, as Lord Neuberger and Lord Dyson have said, be considered as a whole. The system had a legitimate aim, the present is on its face an extreme and unusual case. It is difficult to conceive of any solution which would cater for such cases, without imperilling the whole system. The system has been repeatedly endorsed by domestic courts over a decade. Litigants and their lawyers have justifiably relied upon its validity.

The Judgment prevents any complications for Claimants seeking to recover a success fee and also prevents a hefty bill for the UK government who could have found themselves having to remedy the success fees and ATE Premiums already paid and to be paid as part of on-going pre-Jackson cases.

The Supreme Court invariably made the right decision but what Coventry has done is to place in everybody’s mind the disproportionate nature of the old costs regime and only seeks to reinforce the importance of costs management (and perhaps even the extension of fixed fees) in the years to come. I end this article the same as I ended my previous analysis of this case and it is one of Lord Neuberger’s original comments that has stuck with me the most;

“The fact that it can cost two citizens £400,000 in legal fees and disbursements to establish and enforce their right to live in peace in their home is on any view highly regrettable. The point is reinforced when one takes into account the value of their home,

which is less than £300,000 (coupled with the effect of the nuisance on that value,

£74,000 at the most)

[…]

These figures are very disturbing.”

Regardless of the judgment yesterday, one thing is clear, the figures are very disturbing indeed.

Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision? Let us know in the comments below.

Coventry –v- Lawrence – The Immediate Aftermath and why Additional Liabilities on pre-Jackson cases are still recoverable

December 17, 2014December 14, 2020 Andrew McAulay1 Comment

Most lawyers will likely be familiar with the unexpected judgment provided by the Supreme Court in the case of Coventry and others v Lawrence and another (No 2) [2014] UKSC 46 concerning the recovery of success fees and ATE premiums. The Supreme Court found that the recovery of additional liabilities from defendants may breach the European Convention on Human Rights. The ramifications are potentially both huge and costly.

Before we consider what might happen it is useful to consider what has already happened.

Background

At its simplest the Coventry case was a claim for nuisance by the owners of a bungalow against the occupiers of a stadium 850 yards away which was used for motor racing and resultantly caused lots of noise. The Claimant’s initially won the claim then lost at the Court of Appeal before winning in the Supreme Court where an injunction against the defendants and damages totalling £20,700.00 were ordered. The Claimants got an order that 60% of their costs should be paid by the defendants.

This led to a second issue to be considered in relation to the level of costs sought. The Supreme Court recorded that the claimants had base courts that amounted to £398,000.00 together with a 100% success fee and an ATE premium of circa £350,000.00. In essence the total costs claimed exceeded £1,000,000.00 and the defendant would have been liable for 60% of the costs claimed which would amount to over £640,000.00, 32 times larger than the damages awarded. This was before appeal costs were even taken into consideration.

The lead judgment of Lord Neuberger summed up the all of costs claimed as being “disturbing” and “highly regrettable”. The case in this respect was clearly highly unusual.

The Arguments – For and Against

On the day of the hearing it was argued for the defendants before the Supreme Court that the extent of their costs liability infringed the defendants’ rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to both a fair trial under Article 6, and to peaceful enjoyment of possessions under Article 1 to the 1^st protocol. The defendants specifically referred to the judgments of MGN Limited –v- United Kingdom (2011) and Dombo Beheer BV v Netherlands (1994) in that article 6 would be infringed if the court required the defendants to pay 60% of the success fee and the ATE Premium.

In MGN v UK, the Strasbourg Court held that there was a violation of article 10 (freedom of expression) in respect of the payment of additional liabilities. In this case, however, the violation occurred given the wealth of Naomi Campbell (the Claimant in the original claim against MGN) who it was argued did not need a CFA as she could have utilised alternative means of funding. It was indeed noted by the Court that the law had a legitimate aim of achieving the widest public access to legal services for civil litigation. It was found in this case that the requirement to pay success fees was disproportionate. The Supreme Court commented on Coventry that “in the present case, by contrast, article 10 does not apply and it is apparent that the [claimants] needed the protection of a conditional fee agreement and recoverable ATE premium in order to be able to bring their claim.”

The case of Dombo Beheer BV v Netherlands dealt with the issue of article 6 specifically. In the case of Dombo Beheer BV it effectively provided that one side in a trial should not have an unfair advantage. The Supreme Court stated that it was “by no means clear that the general observation [held in Dombo Beheer BV] would necessarily support the defendants’ argument.” If the claimants did not have access to legal representation by way of a CFA then arguably the claimants right to a fair trial could itself be undermined.

The Supreme Court went on to refer to the case of Callery v Gray [2002] where the House of Lords “effectively confirmed that, subject to reasonableness, success fees and ATE premiums were recoverable”. It was further noted that in Campbell v MGN Ltd (No 2) [2005] that whilst the House of Lords determined that the recovery of additional liabilities (in line with the 1999 Act costs recovery regime) did not infringe article 10, the Strasbourg Court found that it did. The Supreme Court therefore found that the issue of whether the 1999 Act costs regime and specifically the right to recover any success fee and ATE premium from the unsuccessful defendant infringed the EHCR should be open for the Supreme Court to reconsider.

The case was adjourned in order to allow the UK government to present its case to the Court before any ruling was made.

The main counter argument will be based around the principle of ‘Access to Justice’. Indeed the Supreme Court refers to this explicitly and even accepted that the Claimants needed a Conditional Fee Agreement which provided for the recovery of a success fee and ATE premium in order to bring the claim.

The Supreme Court’s key issue appears to be that the Court has no way in which to reign in any additional liabilities claimed. Whilst the court can state that the base costs are disproportionate and too high the same cannot be said for the success fee or the ATE premium. This is because the CPR and 1999 Act have the effect of requiring the defendants to pay any success fee and ATE premium in full, subject to the same having been reasonable but irrespective of proportionality. Indeed the Costs Practice Direction (CPD) 11.5 further states that “in deciding whether the costs claimed are reasonable and (on a standard basis assessment) proportionate, the court will consider the amount of any additional liability separately from the base costs”. CPD 11.9 adds further to this that “a percentage increase will not be reduced simply on the ground that, when added to base costs which are reasonable and (where relevant) proportionate, the total appears disproportionate.” It certainly seems that far from the tentative arguments put forward by the defendants resonating with Lord Neuberger it is in fact the astonishing level of “very disturbing” costs claimed that struck a chord. It is important to note at this stage that the level of any success fee (where the success fee isn’t fixed) / ATE premium can be reduced / challenged at assessment.

We are faced with the question of whether the recoverability of additional liabilities really ever solved the issue of ‘access to justice’ for all? The fact that Woolf’s reforms were replaced by the Jackson reforms would seem to indicate that Woolf’s reforms were not perfect. Clearly additional liabilities formed part of an attractive proposition to lawyers allowing them to take on cases which they may not have otherwise done so but it equally lead to some exuberant cost claims. It is accepted that many claims are no longer as lucrative as they once were with profit margins dropping as a result of Jackson’s reforms. Indeed there is now an on-going debate about whether Jackson is actually undermining access to justice, granted this is another matter but it is interrelated in the greater context of Coventry, that been would a declaration of incompatibility be at logger heads with access to justice? Would the inability to recover a success and ATE Premium have prevented the claimants from bringing their claim?

What happens next?

It is unclear what will happen next and what any longstanding implications may be.

On the most simplistic level a seven judge Supreme Court will hear the matter on February 9th and 10th 2015; the ‘costs D-day’.

Any decision would only apply to CFAs entered into before 1 April 2013. If it is determined that the relevant UK legislation was incompatible with the ECHR and / or Article 1 First Protocol then the government could face significant claims by defendants for the return of additional liabilities that they were unlawfully forced to pay. Exact figures aren’t know but its feeling would no doubt be felt at next year’s general elections as the next government could be faced with a legal bill running into billions of pounds.

The Human Rights Act 1998 section 4 (6) states that a declaration of incompatibility does not “affect the validity, continuing operation or enforcement of the provision in respect of which it is given and is not binding on the parties to the proceedings in which it is made.” Significantly, it appears that a declaration of incompatibility would have no material effect on the legality of the recoverability of additional liabilities for pre-Jackson CFAs.

What happens to the recovery of additional liabilities now?

For post 1 April 2013 CFAs there will be no change, as post-LASPO retainers abolished the recoverability of additional liabilities from a defendant. There may, however, be potential issues relating to pre 31 March 2013 CFAs.

I have seen defendants already seeking to rely upon the uncertainty of the Coventry case to argue that assessments should be adjourned until the Supreme Court’s ruling is given. There is nothing to support that the court would adjourn any assessment hearing but equally it is not 100% clear that the court wouldn’t order an adjournment.

It is my opinion that any additional liabilities will continue to be recoverable in the interim period. There is existing law for the court to apply and even in the event that the recovery of additional liabilities is found to be unlawful any remedy would be against the UK government so the question will be why should a defendant refuse to pay?

A paying party may wish to reference Coventry to create uncertainty and risk. In claims which carry an unfixed success fee or a high value ATE Premium it could potentially lead to some claimants taking a ‘deal’ or discount but I simply cannot see the court taking the position that an assessment should be adjourned, particularly given that the wording of the Human Rights Act 1998 section 4 (6) seems to effectively guarantee the recovery of additional liabilities even if the same has to remedied by the government.

Conclusion

It is regrettable that the Supreme Court is looking at this issue now. Jackson has sought in many respects to deal with the issues that the Supreme Court has found to be so glaring with the abolishment of the recovery of success fees and ATE premiums from defendants and the introduction of costs budgeting and the new stricter test for proportionality.

There is already talk of extending fixed costs to claims up to £250,000.00 (which in my opinion in turn opens the doors for fixed costs to be extended to all claims) and it is clear that there is an agenda to stamp out excessive costs claims. It is just a shame that this is now happening ‘after the event’.

I would welcome people to share their own experiences with Coventry, have you found defendants referencing the case and are you concerned about the potential retrospective abolishment of the recovery of additional liabilities?

As the ‘costs D-day’ draws closer I thought this excerpt from Lord Neuberger’s judgment drives home why the Supreme Court is considering the issue of the recoverability of additional liabilities;