claiming costs when you win.: a waste of time?

[andydd]

Hi there. I was recently involved in a case against my landlord/freeholder, this was allocated to the fast track so I would of been able to claim costs, the defendant has since agreed to settle out of court, but I had started to prepare my costs, these would of been approx 200 hours, which equals only £1850, I could add some disbursements and court fees but that would only bring it to just over £2000. To get £25k you would of had to do over 2000 hours work.

 

The 2/3 rate is an absolute maximum, you cant just go in and say well, a solicitor would charge £x so i'll charge 2/3 of £x, you have to list the hours and it has to be reasonable.

 

Of course being a LiP you come to the situation knowing very little so you can, justifyibly in my view, spend ,many hours on research while a solicitor/barrister should already know the law.

 

Andy

[andydd]

The case was withdrawn after a Probono barrister became involved.

 

Cost were awarded on a "If not agreed basis".

 

The errant solicitor, who was a ** edited out identifiers ** ,Swindon. Was so bad he caused me to have a stress related heart attack, (three days in hospital, several more later for checks) He was warned, and told by a circuit judge that the action should stop. But because of the costs implication he refused.

 

There seems to be an anomally here. Under what circumstances would someone get the 2/3rds of a solicitors rate?

 

Surely it cant be a reserve for the rich on 200K because they wouldnt have been defending themselves. They would have sent Luigi and the boys around to sort out the problem. Which now sounds like it would have been the cheaper option and less stressfull, atleast for me.

 

Why is the 2/3rds rule even there for if no-one can get it?

 

Does anyone know of anyone getting it?

 

My understanding is that the 2/3 rule is not a 'rate' but the absolute maximum total, you still charge at the LiP rate of £9.25.

 

For example, a solicitor has told you he would charge £200 per hour and your case would involve 50 hours work therefore the total would be £10000, however you represent yourself, and do a lot of reasearch (as you dont know the law, unlike a solicitor), so lets say you do four times as much reaserach/work as a solicitor would, lets say 200 hours, that would equal £1850, you could claim for more hours if you genuinely did it but the maximum you could claim would be 2/3's of £10000 which equals £6667.

 

I'm unaware of what you earn has any bearing on it except if you are low paid/out of work you could get exemptiuon for court fees and it is also possible to get Legal Services Commission funding (this means that the other side CANNOT claim costs even if the case is on fast/multi track).

 

Im not sure how/if you can claim for hours of missed work at a fast/multi track, on the small track you can claim your hourly rate for missed work but only upto a maximum of £50.

 

Andy

 

Andy

[andydd]

Having read all the posts I still refer to my earlier posts where i believe that the most a LiP can claim is £9.25 per hour upto a maximum of 2/3 of what a solictor would charge (prob between £150 - £200 ph), I dont agree with the case where someone claimed £136 per hour (as this was 2/3 of an HOURLY rate) but to be honest CPR isnt exactly clear on the isssue but I'm sure there must be case law.

 

Anyway it appears that the OP is a bit miffed because he can only charge a LiP ratye compared to the other side's solicitor rate of £200 (or whatever it is). It does seem unfair but thats the way the law is, either side is free to employ the services of a solicitor or not, another way of looking at is is that you as a LiP have got little to lose (personally cost wise) whereas the other side that employs a solicitor has to pay the solicitors costs and should he lose he would also have to pay you your original claim amount, so there are pros and cons both sides.

 

Personally in my case I was facing a bill of perhaps £10k should I have lost, as the defendant had employed solicitors and counsel, but just before the court ,date, I suspect that the defendant didnt want to risk spending £10k on a solicitor and losing so he offered to settle which suited me.

 

Andy

[andydd]

Ok. Ive read the pdf posted on here and surely all that does is confirm the view point that I (and others) have posted, the Judge states:-

What led Dyson LJ to give leave to this court was his fear that Collins J had not taken into account

what should have been the right approach to a litigant in person. If one reads together 48.6(2) and

(4) one sees that, in principle, a litigant in person is entitled to compensation for his time, and the

rate is fixed by Statutory Instrument and at all relevant times was £9.25 per hour. But there is a cap

which is that however long a litigant spends in person doing things he cannot recover more than,

broadly speaking, two-thirds of what his legal representatives would have done if he had had a

lawyer.

 

Which seems correct, the original judge Collins J seems like an idiot with no knowledge of costs for LiP person, £120 thats laughable !!... good to see the claimant he ended up with over £10,000 which would appear correct working on the basis of 1200 hours (including reasearch) x £9.25.

 

Andy