Costs Case Law Update – March 2025
In this latest case law update, compiled by Colin Campbell, we review some significant decisions from February and March 2025. The cases cover a range of areas, including the assessment of interpreter fees, costs orders in family proceedings, QOCS (Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting), and conditional fee agreements.
Santiago v Motor Insurance Bureau (unreported) – 22 February 2025
Following remission by the Court of Appeal (see [2023] Costs LR 1237) of an interpreter’s disbursement of £924, the court was required to assess what was a reasonable fee. The defendant’s case was that there was no breakdown of the fee which had come from an agency. Having obtained evidence that the interpreter could be booked directly at £300 an hour, that the fee should be £300: the balance was agency profit. HHJ Dight held that in considering the reasonableness of the fee, the court must have regard to the market, and the agency fee element would not be stripped out of the recoverable fee, even where the receiving party had declined to provide a breakdown. The real issue was the “market rate”. The claimant adduced evidence on this issue: the fee was assessed at £794.40, inclusive of VAT.
Rosemin-Culligan v Culligan [2025] EWFC 26 – 26 February
In family proceedings, following its financial remedies decision in relation to a divorced couple, the court made a costs order in favour of the husband in the sum of £84,450 to be paid within 28 days. MacDonald J refused the wife’s application to anonymise the substantive and costs judgments. The wife’s case in respect of conduct pursuant to s.25(1)(g) of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act had been entirely without merit and had the effect of increasing the costs of the proceedings. That fact, with other matters, justified any resulting curtailment of the wife’s right and her family’s right to respect for their private and family life under ECHR art.8.
BB v Al Khayyat [2025] EWHC 443 (KB) – 28 February
Soole J dealt with “consequentials” following a failed application by discontinuing claimants to disapply the presumptive costs rule in CPR 38.6. The discontinuing claimants then opposed orders for interim payments on the grounds that the Court had a discretion to grant QOCS (Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting) protection against enforcement of costs orders, pursuant to CPR 44.16(2)(b) which should be considered only after the completion of detailed assessment. That submission failed. Nothing in the pleaded case provided any basis to infer or imply that any of the discontinuing claimants must have suffered physical or psychiatric injury as a result of the pleaded events and/or therefore were to be treated as if they were making claims for damages for personal injury. As for the claims of the continuing claimants, they had included claims for personal injury but had been struck out as an abuse of process. Accordingly, by CPR 44.15(b), orders for costs made against them were enforceable to the full extent of such orders without the permission of the court.
Assensus Ltd v Wirsol Energy Ltd [2025] EWHC 503 (KB)- 7 March
Constable J dealt with “consequentials” following his judgment dated 26 February in respect of matters arising out of his decision that each of the claims brought against the defendant had failed.The costs of the action: there was no basis to depart from the ordinary rule that costs followed the event, subject to two supplementary costs orders in respect of amendments to the Defence and Reply. Interest on those costs was to run at 2% above base rate until two months after delivery of the bill, when it would revert to the judgments rate of 8%. Interim payment: ordered in the sum of £407,913.39, but there would be no adjustments to the costs order on the basis that that the Defendant ought to receive only 70% of its costs because of its rejection of mediation. Making, and then standing by a reasonable offer had not been unreasonable conduct in light of the ultimate Judgment.
Singh & ors v Ingram (Liquidator of MSD Cash & Carry Plc) [2025] EWCA Civ 264
Asplin, Baker and Coulson LJJ held that a conditional fee agreement entered into between a liquidator and his solicitors on 24 March 2015, was retrospective. That conclusion was supported by the wording of the agreement itself and the factual matrix. It had been the appellant’s case (against whom the liquidator had obtained judgment with indemnity costs) that the term as to retrospectivity was not express, clear or unambiguous, and that, accordingly, those costs were irrecoverable from the appellant. That submission failed. There was no requirement that any particular form of words had to be used, nor that for a CFA to be retrospective, the word “retrospective” had to be used. Anyone reading the CFA would have understood that it was retrospective because it covered, without distinction, the work done on the Claim from 13 March 2012 up to the date of the CFA, and all the work to be done on the Claim thereafter. Appeal dismissed.
