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In
Blacklion Law LLP v Amira Nature Foods Ltd & Anor [2021] EWHC B22 (Costs) (11 November 2021)
the Senior Courts Costs Office examined in detail the issue of solicitor and own client bills under the Solicitors Act 1974, including statute bills, Chamberlain bills, interim statute bills and non-statute interim invoices.
Here the claimant solicitors took proceedings against the defendants in relation to unpaid invoices relating to two retainers.
One was a general retainer covering a variety of matters and the other concerned services relating to a proposed bond issue which never took place; the proceedings here related only to the general retainer.
The claimant delivered 10 invoices and the defendants paid various sums, and there were some credit notes, leaving a balance of £118,510.81.
The defence relied upon the proposition that an alleged lack of particularity in relation to the services rendered failed to establish that the claimant solicitors had the right to render the invoices and the defendant had an obligation to pay them.
The defence did not deny or put the claimant to proof that the claimant’s general retainer invoices were valid statute bills.
Had it done so, it may have furnished a defence to the claim, forcing the claimant to deliver a final, valid bill.
The claimant obtained summary judgment from a Deputy Master with the amount of the costs to be assessed, together with orders as to the pleadings in the detailed assessment.
The defendant then sought a bill of costs of the client normally prepared for statutory detailed assessments under the Solicitors Act 1974, but the claimant said that the assessment ordered was a common law assessment and not a statutory assessment, and that the defendant was out of time to apply for a statutory assessment and that the court had no power to require the claimant to disclose the files.
The court here said that even if no statute bills had ever been rendered by the claimant under that general retainer, it was not appropriate to make an order now, as that would unpick the agreed arrangements embodied in the Deputy Master’s order, solely because the defendant, years into the litigation, wished radically to revise its position.
It also said that it had no power to order delivery of a statute bill in a particular format; only a solicitor can determine the content and terms of that solicitor’s claim for payment and neither the client, nor the court, can make that determination on a solicitor’s behalf.
The court held that on a non-statutory assessment it had power to order a breakdown of the solicitor’s bill and that its case management powers under the Civil Procedure Rules were not bound by 19th Century authority.
The court could make any order it saw fit in order to achieve the overriding objective and that included the delivery of a breakdown, if a breakdown is needed for the efficient and fair assessment of the solicitor’s bill.
The breakdown is a tool to assist the assessment of a non-statutorily bill, and not a replacement of it.
“77. That is why, for example, where the solicitor has delivered a discounted bill and the client has applied under section 70 of the 1974 act for detailed assessment, the solicitor is entitled to produce a breakdown showing the full, undiscounted value of the work done and disbursements incurred. The client will then have to shoulder the burden of showing, by reference to the full breakdown, that the solicitor’s reasonable fees and disbursements are less than the amount of the bill actually delivered. If the breakdown is reduced by one fifth or more, but the bill is not, then the “one-fifth rule” embodied in section 70(9) of the 1974 Act will operate in the solicitor’s favour, not the client’s.”
The court held that the parties had by their conduct accepted that the bills were all statute bills and that was that.
The court doubted that it had an inherent jurisdiction to order a non-statutory assessment on an invoice that is not a final statute bill, as such invoice would have no legal force.
“93. Even if this were a case, as the Defendants argue, in which the Claimant has never delivered a statute bill it is not a case in which it would be appropriate to exercise the court’s discretion to order that such a bill now be delivered. To do so would be to support a collateral attack upon the order made by Deputy Master Nurse on 15 February 2021, which sets out an agreed arrangement by which the earlier invoices rendered by the Claimant are to be treated as paid and settled, and the unpaid remainder are to be subjected to the scrutiny of the court. Nor do I have the power to order that the Claimant deliver a statute bill in any particular form.
94. Both parties have, from the outset of this litigation to the judgment obtained by the Claimant on 15 February 2021, conducted these proceedings on the basis that all of the invoices rendered by the Claimant under the General Retainer had the status, whether individually or collectively, of a statute bill or bills. The judgment obtained by the Claimant, which sets out the terms of this assessment, is inconsistent with any other conclusion. It is too late for the Defendants now to attempt to argue a different case before me.
95. If the General Retainer invoices are individual statute bills rather than a Chamberlain series, this court does not have the power to order the statutory assessment of those paid more than 12 months ago. If they do form a Chamberlain series, no order for statutory assessment could be made except under special circumstances, and no such circumstances have been shown.
96. I am not persuaded that it is appropriate for me to restart the process of assessing invoices 304, 312, 314, 322 and 1179 by making an order either for the inspection of the Claimant’s files or for the Claimant to deliver a breakdown, but subject to submissions I do propose to review the information provided in support of the Claimant’s bills and the objections taken to them, to determine whether further directions may be needed.”
