The court considered the effect of collective conditional fee agreements. The defendant appealed against the decision of the Costs Judge whereby he held that the Claimant was entitled to claim a success fee and that there had been no breach of the indemnity principle.
Held: The appeal failed.
Gray J said: ‘clause 5.8 of the CCFA is to be interpreted as meaning that in the first instance the solicitors will call upon the Union rather than the member to pay their costs. I do not construe clause 5.8 as excluding altogether the liability of the member to pay the solicitors’ costs. The inclusion of the word ‘directly’ presupposes some other, indirect route by which the member may be liable to pay costs, for example if the Union were to withdraw support by annulling legal assistance. I accept that the parties cannot have intended by clause 5.8 that a Defendant would be able to litigate a claim by a Union member without any risk of having to pay that member’s costs. Mr McLaren concedes that this would be a consequence that the draftsman did not intend.’
He considere dthat there was a policy that the courts: ‘if they properly can, to avoid a construction of an agreement which will involve a breach of the indemnity principle because of the unfairness consequent upon such a conclusion’.
Judges:
Gray J
Citations:
[2005] EWHC 1771 (QB), [2006] 1 Costs LR 82
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Radford and Another v Frade and Others QBD 8-Jul-2016
The court was asked as to the terms on which solicitors and Counsel were retained to act for the defendants. The appeals did not raise any issues concerning costs practice, and were by way of review of the Costs Judge’s rulings, and not by way of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Legal Professions, Costs
Updated: 03 July 2022; Ref: scu.229289