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

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URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Costs/2003/9045.html
Cite as: [2003] EWHC 9045 (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.25 of 2003

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Jemma Trust Ltd v Liptrott & Forrester
24 October 2003
Court of Appeal (Peter Gibson, Mance and Longmore LJJ)

This was a direct appeal from a decision of a Costs Judge to the Court of Appeal in relation to a very substantial non contentious bill of costs totalling well over £½ million in respect of the winding up of the estate of some £10 million.

The Costs Judge had decided, as a preliminary issue, that in this day and age solicitors’ time costing was so sophisticated that it necessarily included all calculations in assessing the hourly charge out rate, so that there was no room for an additional charge to a client for this category of work based on the value of the property or estate in question.

The Court of Appeal reversed that decision, saying that it was permissible for a solicitor to charge for this category of work either on an hourly basis only, or on the basis of value only, or on a combination of the two. The court considered that the regressive scale set out in the case of Maltby v D J Freeman [1978] 1 WLR 431 needed updating and modification, but were doubtful whether the resulting figure was necessarily determinative of the total charge to be made.

Whilst giving specific guidance to the Costs Judge to whom this case was remitted, and the profession generally, both the Lords Justices who gave reasoned judgments (Longmore and Mance LJJ) emphasised the importance at looking at the final figure in the round in order to ensure that the appropriate factors had been taken into account in every individual case to arrive at a figure that represented fair and reasonable remuneration to both solicitor and the client, as required by the relevant statutory instrument.