The High Court has rejected attempts by a law firm to blame unnamed costs draftsmen for delays in sending final bills to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA).
East London firm Charles Ete & Co was sued by the Lord Chancellor, on behalf of the LAA, for nearly £800,000 in payments on account that were made but not subsequently backed up by final bills. Mr Justice Holgate said the evidence showed “over-claiming to a substantial extent in a substantial number of cases”.
He said that where a solicitor failed to deliver final bills, and “no reliable, sufficient explanation” was provided for doing so, “then it may be appropriate to infer an unwillingness on the part of the solicitor to comply with his billing obligations”.
The judge said Mr Ete’s explanations for the delays in billing “lack any credibility”. Among those he sought to blame were costs draftsmen, but the judge said: “No evidence was given to show which draftsman had been responsible for delay, the reasons for the delay, the cases affected and for how long, and what steps were taken by the firm (and when) in order to address any such problem.
“In any event, as Mr Ete himself said, the solution was for the firm to remove cases from any costs draftsman who was failing to provide bills in good time… Any suggestion it could not find a costs draftsman to complete final bills before the autumn of 2011 or January 2012 in those cases where LSC has entered a nil assessment in order to recoup POAs is wholly lacking in credibility.”
Holgate J concluded that “the wholly unreliable explanations put forward by Mr Ete lead me to the conclusion that the defendants were plainly unwilling to submit final bills when cases were concluded and those bills ought to have been submitted”.
He gave judgment for the Lord Chancellor in the sum of £795,184. Further, having beaten its part 36 offer, he received more than £133,000 in interest, including at a higher rate after the part 36 offer was made, nearly £65,000 for beating the offer and additional interest of almost £15,000, making a total of more than £993,000.