England and Wales High Court (Senior Courts Costs Office) Decisions

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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Senior Courts Costs Office) Decisions >> Summit Property Ltd v Pitmans (A Firm) [2002] EWHC 9017 (Costs) (18 November 2001)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Costs/2002/9017.html
Cite as: [2002] EWHC 9017 (Costs)

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This summary of a judgment has been obtained from the Supreme Court Costs Office pages on the HM Courts Service web site. The citation used by BAILII is not an officially approved citation. The full text of the judgment may have an official Neutral Citation issued by the court, and may be available elsewhere on BAILII.

 

 

 No.4 of 2002

Summit Property Ltd v Pitmans (A Firm)
18 November 2001
Court of Appeal (Tuckey, Chadwick & Longmore LJJ)

At the end of a six day trial Park J gave judgment for the defendants, ordering the unsuccessful claimant property company to pay 30% of the successful defendant's costs, and the successful defendant firm to pay 65% of the costs of the unsuccessful claimant. It was estimated that the "ball park figure" for costs on both sides was between £140,000 and £146,000.

To quote Longmore LJ's judgment:

"The reason why the Judge made this comparatively unusual order is that the defendants failed on what he regarded as the main issue in the case, viz, the question whether they were in breach of duty as solicitors to their clients. They succeeded ultimately on what he called a point of law or on causation or, perhaps more accurately, quantum of the claim, namely that, even if the defendants had performed their duty and had obtained for the claimant the benefit of the transaction which they lost, the claimant would have obtained that benefit by virtue of being in possession of confidential information from a third party and could not have kept that benefit because it would have been accountable for it to that third party."

There was an appeal against the costs order made by the Judge, and on the complicated facts of the case the Court of Appeal held that the Judge had been entitled to adopt an issue based approach to costs, and that no member of the court could say that his decision was so out of line that it should be varied or reversed. To quote Lord Justice Chadwick:

"It is of course still necessary to stand back and ask whether the result is so plainly wrong that it must be regarded as perverse. I do not think that it is open to this court to take that view in this case. It is pertinent to have in mind the fact that a Judge had tried a six day case in an action which arose out of the defendant solicitors' decision to determine unilaterally a retainer by a client to proceed towards the purchase of property; in circumstances where that action was plainly prejudicial to the client. The outcome, taken as a whole, is not one which can be described as so unjust that the Judge's decision on costs must be rejected as perverse."