Enforceability of Conditional Fee Agreement. A conditional fee agreement was unenforceable where it had various deficiencies that were significant enough to prevent substantial compliance with the Conditional Fee Agreements Regulations 2000. The agreement in question had not been drawn up by a lawyer. The question for the Court was whether any departures from the Regulations or a requirement under s.58 of the 1990 Act had a materially adverse effect on the protection of the client or on the pr ...
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Amendment of Graduated Fee Legislation. In a case concerning the amount due to a barrister in graduated fees, the Lord Chancellor amended the governing regulations, the Criminal Defence Service (Funding) Order 2001 to reflect the true intention of the draftsman.
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Agreement between Claimant and Solicitor. An agreement between the Claimant and his solicitor concerning the amount of fees payable, which fees were ultimately to be paid by the Defendant under a costs order, had not amounted to a void contingency agreement, and on its proper interpretation, the agreement had not released the Claimant from any further liability to pay costs to the solicitor. The mere fact that the Claimant had agreed that he would not bring an action for his outstanding costs ...
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Court’s Discretion under CPR r.44. The Court could not use CPR r.44 to circumvent the mandatory provisions of CPR r.45 in order to award to a claimant who had failed, at trial, to better a Part 36 offer or payment, a success fee no greater than that to which he would have been entitled under r.45.16 had the offer been accepted. It was held that r.44 and r.45 have to be read together; the Court could neither directly award a different success fee nor award the Claimant a proportion of his costs ...
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Consequences of failure to comply with pre-action protocol. A judge had misdirected himself as to the applicability of the general rule on costs and had been wrong to reduce the recovery of costs by the successful party to nil for failure to engage in negotiations in accordance with a pre-action protocol. The Court exercised the judge’s discretion afresh, taking guidance from his view as to the way he would have treated the Claimant as the successful party without the Defendant’s willingness t ...
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Settlements made under optional risk offer schemes. Costs were determined in respect of settlements made under optional risk offer schemes which had not existed when the parties had originally entered into a claims handling agreement, which stipulated the fixed costs payable for settlements arising out of group litigation against the British Coal Corporation in respect of its liability to coal miners for respiratory injuries.
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The court made general observations about costs capping orders, but concluded that it was for the Civil Procedure Rule Committee to decide whether to take up the issues that had been raised, in particular in relation to the difference of judicial opinion as to when and in what circumstances costs capping orders should be made.
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In the light of the special features of the instant case, despite being identified as the "winner" the claimant would be entitled to only 75 per cent of its costs.
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Whilst the outcome of the parties' separate claims was different, the issues and the evidence were so inextricably intertwined that it was not appropriate to make an issue-based costs order and it was preferable to instead impose a percentage reduction of the claimants' costs which they could otherwise recover to reflect the defendants' success in certain issues.
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The natural and ordinary meaning of the Collective Conditional Fee Agreements Regulations 2000 reg.5(1) was that there had to be a provision in a collective conditional fee agreement providing for a success fee that complied with the specification set out in the regulation, but it did not additionally require the performance of the prescribed condition.
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