A discrepancy in Precedent H raises the question of whether court fees are to be included or are excluded in a costs budget. The judiciary have confirmed that they should be included.

For those who have already been involved in costs budgeting and completion of Precedent H you will no doubt have noticed the discrepancy in relation to court fees:

1. Page 1 provides that the budget excludes certain items with the list of exclusions including Court fees
2. Page 2 onwards requires Court fees for each phase of the litigation to be provided

When completing Precedent H, court fees are not excluded and they should be provided on page 2 onwards where applicable.

The up to date version of Precedent H removes reference to court fees in the list of exclusions on page 1. Therefore you need to make sure that you are using an up to date version.

Be aware that the new form N181 (directions questionnaire) indicates that if a case is likely to be allocated to the multi track a Precedent H must be filed.

The courts are ordering that form N181 be filed in cases issued before 1st April. The fact that the court has ordered the filing of the form N181 may mean that the case is caught by CPR 3.12 and the parties are required to file budgets.

The draconian penalty for not filing a budget means it is probably too risky not to do so.

In Flatman V Germany and Weddall v Barchester Health Care Ltd the Court of Appeal have held that solicitors who fund disbursements cannot for that reason alone be considered commercial funders of the litigation and therefore liable to pay a successful defendant’s costs. The judgment will come as a relief to firms who have funded disbursements without the benefit of ATE insurance.

The court also decided that where the only basis for seeking disclosure about the client’s funding arrangements was to find out whether the solicitors had funded disbursements it should not be ordered.

Better late than never the Law Society have now published a new model conditional fee agreement and guide for use under the new regime. The link below will take you to the relevant page on the Law Society website:

New model CFA

If you have any cases that you can issue before the end of this month then it would be a good idea to issue them to avoid being caught by the new rule on proportionality which will apply to any cases commenced after 1^st April. [Read more...]