England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
DIVISIONAL COURT

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
		04/07/2014

Mr Justice Stuart-Smith:

1. On 10 April 2014 the Court gave judgment in favour of the Claimants and ordered that they should be paid their costs of the claim, to be summarily assessed if not agreed. The parties did not reach agreement and therefore made submissions in writing as directed. This is our ruling on the summary assessment of the Claimants' costs, which were claimed under three headings.

Qamar Solicitors: sum claimed £9,399.91 (inclusive of VAT)

2. The individual Claimants are solicitors but instructed Qamar for various tasks which it was not appropriate for them to carry out themselves. While we do not criticise the use of outside solicitors in this way, the claim in respect of correspondence (136 letters in at £20 per letter and 94 letters out at £20 per letter) seems excessive and we have seen nothing to explain why such a large number of letters were reasonably required. For that reason and on the general ground of proportionality, we reduce the sum claimed in respect of Qamar by £2,500 (+ VAT @ 20% on the charges that have been reduced) and allow £6,399.91 under this head.

The Claimants' Costs: sum claimed £39,346.59 (inclusive of VAT)

3. The Defendant objects in principle to costs being awarded in respect of work carried out by the firm of which the individual Claimants were members. We reject this objection: see Malkinson v Trim [2003] 1 WLR 463. The Second Defendant takes further objections which may be summarised as follows:

i) Some of the costs relate to a hearing on 26 June 2013 when the Claimants applied to Haddon-Cave J for an interim injunction. The application failed and the Judge ordered that the costs of that application should be paid by the Claimants to the Second Defendant, which has been done;

ii) The Second Defendant describes a number of the items claimed as being either "excessive" or "grossly excessive" and asserts that some work could have been delegated from a Grade A fee earner to someone less expensive;

iii) Some charges have been included which should form part of a firm's overheads e.g. photocopying costs;

iv) There is an item simply described as "Costs" in the sum of £3784.60 for which no other description has been given.

4. Taking these items in turn:

i) The order that we made for the costs of the action to be payable to the Claimants did not specify that it did not include those costs attributable to the application to Haddon-Cave J. It was not necessary to do so as it was implicit in the normal way. The Second Defendant's submission on this point is well founded and is upheld;

ii) We agree that a significant number of items claim for periods that, on any view, appear to be excessive. In addition, although the rate for the Grade A fee-earner was reasonable, there are a number of tasks (such as the preparation of bundles) that could easily have been done by someone more junior at lesser expense. We have therefore made adjustments to reflect these two points;

iii) We agree that photocopying charges would normally be regarded as overheads and not be separately chargeable. However, there is a discretion to allow some charges where the amount of photocopying is exceptional. Here the claim is for 4896 pages at 0.5p per copy. In our view, this can reasonably be regarded as an exceptional amount and we award £100 (+ VAT) in place of the £244.80 (+ VAT) claimed;

iv) No justification for the sum of £3784.60 has been provided, despite the Second Defendant taking specific objection to the lack of any explanation of the basis of claim. We do not know what it was for and disallow the item.

5. In the light of these and the other individual points taken by the Second Defendant, we reduce the hours claimed (142.7) by 60, of which 12 hours are in respect of the hearing on 23 June 2013, 6.5 are in respect of the Grade A fee earner photocopying and the balance is attributable to reducing the periods allowed on specific items. There are two main reasons for this last category of reductions. First, some items claim a number of hours that appear to us to be unreasonably and unjustifiably high (even acknowledging that the Second Defendant kept all matters in issue throughout). Second, some items claim for all work to be done by the Grade A fee-earner where we consider that some of the work should have been delegated: where we take this view we have catered for it by reducing the hours claimed rather than attempting to adjust the hourly rate.

Counsel's Fees: sum claimed £41,220 (inclusive of VAT)

6. It was reasonable to instruct Mr Bowers with a junior. While there may have been cheaper counsel who would have accepted the brief, this was a matter of extreme seriousness for the Claimants and amply justified instructing specialist counsel.
7. We do not know what hourly rates are charged by Mr Bowers or Ms Bright. We have therefore had to approach the fees claimed without being able to identify how many hours' work the sums claimed would represent. We are, however, satisfied that there should be a reduction of allowable Counsel's fees in three areas:

i) The sum of £2500 is claimed as a brief to attend the hearing before Hadden-Cave J in June 2013, which is not recoverable: see [4(1)] above;

ii) The sums claimed for counsel to attend the hearing before us are £10,000 for Mr Bowers, £2,500 for junior counsel and £250 for counsel's expenses in attending Leeds. Given the level of the representation we consider that £12,750 for preparation of the skeleton argument (good though it was) and attendance at the hearing (which was also to a high standard) is excessive. We allow £10,000 overall, inclusive of any costs incurred by counsel in attending Leeds;

iii) The sum of £3,000 is claimed for "post judgment negotiations and drafting of orders and applications", allocated as to £2,000 to Mr Bowers and £1,000 to junior counsel. We consider that this is excessive and allow £2,000.

8. The net effect of these reductions is that we allow £28,100 plus VAT for counsel's fees, a total of £33,720.

Summary Conclusion

9. The effect of this assessment is that we allow:

i) Qamar Solicitors £ 6,399.91

ii) Claimants' Costs £23,388.26

iii) Counsel's fees £33,720.00

Total £63,508.17

10. Standing back once more, we consider that this level of costs is high but not disproportionate for a case of considerable importance to the Claimants in circumstances where the Defendants continued to describe their claim as being without merit to the end.
11. We therefore assess costs summarily in the sum of £63,508.17.