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The difference between a debt and a claim for damages: part 1

It is sometimes said that once the time for taxation has expired, a bill for legal fees may be ‘sued on as a debt’.  Quite frankly, I have never quite understood what the difference between a debt claim and a damages claim is, or why it matters in general, though there are certain consequences I’m aware of in terms of the  civil procedures applicable.  By way of first instalment: I just saw this little passage in Copuss Pty Limited v Nix [2012] NSWSC 671, and thought to squirrel it away on the blog:

’56              There is no reason why Copuss should not be entitled to recover the loans it made to Mr and Mrs Nix. The recovery of those loans do not depend on the contract and whether Mr and Mrs Nix were in breach of it. As the High Court explained in Young v Queensland Trustees Ltd (1956) 99 CLR 560 at 567:

The common law does not and never did conceive of indebtedness in a sum certain for an executed consideration as a mere breach of contract: it is rather the detention of a sum of money and that was so whether the creditor enforced his demand by an action of debt or by indebitatus assumpsit.

 And later it said (at 569):

 A debt recoverable under an indebitatus count was not and is not now conceived of simply as a cause of action for breach of duty or obligation. In other words it is a mistake to regard the liability to pay a debt of a kind formerly recoverable in debt or indebitatus assumpsit as no more than the result of a breach of contract, a breach which the creditor must affirmatively allege and prove.’

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How not to plead a contract

Update, 17 January 2013: this colourful judgment of a Master of the Supreme Court of Western Australia is worth a read. For example:

’23 At par 17, the plaintiff pleads that the agreement was entered into between February and November 2007. That is a remarkably long period. It should always be possible to say when a contract came into existence.

24 In a classical analysis, it is when the offer is accepted. Any uncertainty over the date on which the contract became complete and enforceable only arises because of evidentiary uncertainty about when a particular event occurred: there may be doubt, for example, about whether a written acceptance was delivered, or a conversation took place, on Tuesday or Wednesday. But there will still be a short interval of time during which those things are said to have taken place.

25 Even in the sort of case in which a contract emerges from a course of conduct, such as was considered by the Full Court in Marist Brothers Community Inc v The Shire of Harvey (1994) 14 WAR 69, it is always possible to give a definite date by which it can be said that there is an enforceable contract.

26 In neither type of case is it likely that the point at which a contract came into existence cannot be narrowed down any further than to a nine-month period. Nine months is the gestation period for humans, not for contracts. A plea that a contract came into existence in a nine-month period is embarrassing.’

Update, 4 June 2012:  This post prompted quite a few readers privately to email me sharing various frustrations they have.  One pointed me to an article by a Qld silk, Anthony Morris, venting his top 7 pleading frustrations, ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Pleading’, Hearsay, Issue 32, December 2008.  I completely agree with the first 6 and all of the 7th except for the bit which recommends against using automatic cross-references to other paragraphs of the pleading — technology must have moved on since 2008.  I am in heated agreement with him in relation to his second point, and wonder whether any Victorians consider that pleading in numbered paragraphs what might ordinarily be contained within particulars, so as to force (or even entice) the responding party to state their position in relation to that allegation, might not be permitted for some reason.

Original post: One might think that nothing could be more central to commercial litigation practice than to plead an agreement.  Sometimes the line between facts and evidence — one you plead and the other you don’t — can be a bit blurry, but one might think that it would give a lawyer pause before pleading an invoice given pursuant to an agreement as a particular of the agreement itself.  Yet it happens all the time, perhaps none moreso than in the solicitor who sues for fees, representing himself.

Then there seems to be a pathological inability in pleaders to allege a straight written agreement.  It’s always partly implied to give business efficacy to the agreement, but the implied term is never stated and nor are the reasons why the agreement would be inefficacious in a business sense without the implied term.  And often enough, it’s partly oral too, but the thrust of the words spoken so giving rise to the oral terms are not set out.

Speak up if you can better this pleading (bear in mind in order to be valid all the terms of a costs agreement have to be in writing or evidenced in writing) which is paining my Saturday evening, or just send me your favourite examples of the same phenomenon: Continue reading “How not to plead a contract”

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Must a creditor obey debtor’s direction as to which of several debts a payment is to be put towards?

(Amended on 31 May 2012) Except that I had a feeling creditors were obliged to apply debtors’ payments to the oldest outstanding debt, I have never known until recently what the law was exactly in relation to a creditor’s obligations and entitlements where a debtor makes a payment which could be applied to one of several debts.  I suspect many lawyers are in the same situation. Experience teaches that allocations of payments against debts can have many ramifications, the most obvious of which are in relation to interest, and the application of statutes of limitations.  This statement was recently re-stated as good law in Victoria:

‘When a debtor is making a payment to his creditor he may appropriate the money as he pleases, and the creditor must apply it accordingly. If the debtor does not make any appropriation at the time when he makes the payment the right of application devolves on the creditor.’

It is a statement of Lord McNaughten in Cory Brothers & Company v Owners of Turkish Steamship ‘Mecca’ [1897] AC 286 at 293 and Deeley v Lloyds Bank Limited [1912] AC 756, 783 is apparently to like effect.  In response to the original version of this post, two readers, fellow barrister blogger in Melbourne Paul Duggan and Brian Lambert of Brisbane’s Birch & Co, alerted me to an additional proposition, being the one I had had a vague undertanding of.  Namely that where neither creditor nor debtor makes any conscious appropriation (as will frequently be the case), the default position is that the payment will be applied to the oldest debts first: Devaynes v Noble (‘Clayton’s Case‘) (1816) 1 Mer 572.

The rule was re-asserted by Mason CJ and Dawson, Toohey and Gaudron JJ in Sibbles v Highfern Pty Ltd (1987) 164 CLR 214; [1987] HCA 66 at [11], and was neatly summarised by Lockhart J in Re Walsh; Ex Parte: Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (1982) 60 FLR 355; [1982] FCA 88 in a passage which also explains what is meant by the debtor making an appropriation. His Honour said:

‘A debtor who owes two debts to a creditor is entitled to appropriate a payment which he makes to his creditor to one debt rather than to the other. If he omits to do so, the creditor may make the appropriation. If neither makes any appropriation, the law appropriates the payment to the earlier debt. If there is specific appropriation by the debtor cadit quaestio. In the absence of a specific appropriation it is a question of fact whether there was any appropriation by the debtor. To constitute an appropriation there must be more than an intention to appropriate by the debtor. I respectfully adopt the following passage from the judgment of Greene L.J. in Leeson v. Leeson (1936) 2 K.B. 156 at pp. 162-163:-

“When, however, he does not notify the creditor of his intention, and when the circumstances are such that the creditor receives the payment merely in satisfaction of the debts and the payment is not more appropriate to the payment of the one debt than to that of the other the creditor is entitled to make the appropriation. When it is said that there need not be an express appropriation of a payment, but that the appropriation can be inferred, that does not mean that appropriation of a payment can be inferred from some undisclosed intention in the mind of the debtor. It is to be inferred from the circumstances of the case as known to both parties. Any other view might lead to injustice, as the creditor’s right to appropriate a payment would be defeated. When the matter is examined upon principle it will be found that an undisclosed intention in the mind of the debtor is not sufficient to support an appropriation. If authority is needed for that proposition it can be found in the judgment of Lush J. in Parker v. Guinness 27 Times L.R. 129, 130 where he said: ‘What is to be considered is this. Is the true inference to be drawn from all the circumstances of the case that the debtor paid the moneys generally on account, leaving the creditor to apply them as he thought fit, or is the true inference that he paid them on account of special portions of the debt for the purpose and with a view to wipe these out of the account? His undisclosed intention so to do would, of course, not benefit him. It is what he did in fact, and not what he meant to do that is to be regarded.’ A debtor’s undisclosed intention to appropriate a payment to one of two debts owed by him to a creditor cannot benefit him.”‘

 

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Party-party recovery of pre-proceedings costs

Her Honour Davies J considered the recoverability of pre-action costs in the context of an application for security for costs.  The defendant sought security for $1 million already expended prior to the commencement of the proceedings against it, but after the plaintiffs gave media publicity to their intention to proceed them.  Her Honour decided that such costs could form part of the costs in respect of which security for costs may be ordered, and did include an allowance for such costs in her grant of security in the sum of $6 million.  My fellow blogger Liz Harris of Harris Costs Lawyers’ expert opinion as to the NAB’s likely costs was largely accepted. The decision is Pathway Investments Pty Ltd v National Australia Bank Limited [2012] VSC 97. In relation to the basic principle relating to the recoverability of pre-action costs, more usually claimed by plaintiffs, her Honour said: Continue reading “Party-party recovery of pre-proceedings costs”

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What do you need to plead in a suit for fees?

I have posted before about what needs to be pleaded in a modern suit for fees: see this post and the posts linked to within it.  Today I have come across a decision in which the failure to plead that which many people think need not be pleaded resulted in a semi-successful application to set aside a default judgment entered by a solicitor against a former client: Wiley v Ross Lawyers (14 February 2012) [2012] QCATA 22, a decision of Queensland’s equivalent of VCAT.  The lawyers had not pleaded a valid costs agreement or other basis for charging fees on the basis they were in fact charged, that there had been good service of a valid bill, or that there had been good service of a notice of rights.  Apart from these defects in the pleading, the evidence in support of the application to set aside the default judgment was not compelling.

The tribunal ordered that the application to set aside the default judgment was to succeed or fail depending on whether the lawyers filed an affidavit verifying compliance with chapter 3 of Part 3.4 of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), the part which deals with costs disclosure defaults.  I can only imagine that there are very many clients against whom lawyers have entered default judgments who are likely to be able to have them set aside as irregular, even years after the event, though the Queensland tribunal cases might be distinguished on the basis of the need to establish for jurisdictional reasons that what was being sued for was a debt or liquidated demand.  The member relied on a previous decision of the same tribunal (Morales v Murray Lyons Solicitors (a firm) [2010] QCATA 87) where the Deputy President, Judge Kingham agreed with the reasons of Member Mandikos, who said: Continue reading “What do you need to plead in a suit for fees?”

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Value pricing

What follows are my rambling first thoughts about value pricing, penned without having read any of the leading treatises on the question, and without having read any sophisticated value pricing-based retainers.  I am most willing to be shown the nuances and possibilities overlooked in my preliminary explorations.  I am not wedded to any of the positions.  I put them up for discussion.  I think the hourly rate as currently applied is dreadful in many ways, but I have anxieties about how fixed fees and value billing would apply in practice outside the relatively even bargaining ground of major firms and major corporations’ in-house legal teams in which it seems often to be discussed.  I have this anxiety that it is not going to do anything to remedy the most basic problem causing the cost of access to justice to be too great, the rapacity of mediocre lawyers, and may in fact exacerbate it.  I suspect that well-drafted, well-regulated fixed fees will crap on the current regime, but think the current regime might be greatly improved, narrowing the gap. And I worry about the regulation of fixed fees, given our legal system’s prima facie reluctance to interfere in fairly negotiated contractual arrangements.  In other words, I worry that the sanctity of contract will inhibit the adjustment by the courts of fees rendered by lawyers to clients.

When I think of fixed fees, I tend to think of them in very simple terms: ‘I will do your case for $100,000, including disbursements and counsel’s fees.’  There is a tendency to think of the $100,000 as a cap, but in a simple agreement like this, the lawyer will get the fee if the other side dies and the cause of action dies with him, or the other side settles a few days into the retainer, or the client stumbles across a smoking gun which renders their prospects of victory at nil.  Galling as paying anyone $550 per hour for a job which may go on and on and on may be, paying someone $100,000 for next to nothing must be even more galling.  Of course value pricing retainers may be very sophisticated, and I am guilty of myopia.

There is also, I think, a tendency to think of fixed fees as giving certainty at the outset in a way unique to this method of charging.  In Victoria (and, I think, everywhere else in Australia), solicitors must by law estimate at or near the start of a matter its total costs — their fees, witness fees to be charged as disbursements, counsel’s fees, and other disbursements such as trial and transcript fees — or, if that is not practicable a range of the possible total costs. So clients should be entitled to be placed into the same position as the solicitor in terms of knowledge of how much their matter will cost, with the advantage of fixed fee being no more than the apportioning to the client the risk of the matter turning out to be simpler than the price justifies and to the solicitor the risk of it being more complex.

Because of the poverty of solicitors’ compliance with the obligation to give a good faith considered estimate of total costs at the outset (and the almost complete non-enforcement of the obligation), fixed fees represent a great improvement to clients who fix them in their interests.  But at least some of that improvement could be achieved by fixing the current system by enforcing the requirement for good faith carefully considered estimates of total costs, rather than moving to fixed fees.  Quite a bit more could be achieved by introducing penalties for solicitors who exceed estimated total fees without justification.  More again by stamping out fraud.  And I suspect that the very real practical advantage of fixed fees begins to diminish somewhat as soon as the fixed fee becomes a series of fixed fees, and subject to scopes of work such that disputes over variations assume all the difficulties of construction law, except that one party will be a lawyer who will not have to engage lawyers to have the dispute on his behalf.  Especially is that so in the case of the ad hoc user of legal services who have no commercial relationship with the lawyers within which to negotiate.

I have this anxiety that what fixed fees are really about is allowing lawyers to sell their learning (aka ‘intellectual capital’) for fees much greater than usual rates would allow for the time involved in solving the client’s problem, or advising or representing them.  This is where ‘value’ comes in, I worry: where the value of the lawyer’s services to the client exceeds the product of the lawyer’s time multiplied by usual fees, the client should be charged more to reflect the value to the client of the services.

And I think I have a problem with the entrepreneurial professional. No doubt some people think I am an entrepeneurial professional, what with my blog and all, but from time to time prospective clients inform me of their problem, I send them a seminar paper that covers what they know, and they get what they want with a few minutes of my time at no fee.  More often, I provide advice for a few hundred dollars which a non-expert charging on time would be likely to charge substantially more for.  I think of this as the upside of time based billing, a manifestation of the proposition of the profession as a public service.  I want to make a good living, but if I can assist without spending too much time, then I feel some sort of duty to do so.  Of course there is nothing about time billing which makes it inherently favourable to giving away your intellectual capital.  Value pricers can be kind too.  But I just get the impression that value pricing as a mindset will tell lawyers that they must charge a premium whenever a good chunk of their ‘intellectual capital’ is let loose. Continue reading “Value pricing”

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Gross overcharging penalties surveyed

In Legal Profession Complaints Committee v PJO’H [2011] WASAT 95 (S), delivered on 20 February 2012 and not yet on Austlii, the Tribunal helpfully reviewed the penalties awarded in the gross overcharging cases over the years before suspending the respondent from practice for 6 months (the Committee wanted 18).  Two other things are notable about the case.  First, the Complaints Committee’s costs of the matter were $134,000 and were described as reasonable.  Second, the practitioner drafted his character witnesses’ evidence himself.  Didn’t go down well.  The decision was the work of a tribunal of three presided over by Justice Cheney.  Here’s the Tribunal’s survey:

‘In Re Veron; Ex parte Law Society (NSW) [1966] 84 WN (Pt 1) (NSW) 136, the practitioner was struck off following findings of some 65 instances of overcharging clients in respect of personal injury actions. The overcharging was found to be deliberate and there were related charges proved against the practitioner involving dishonesty or fraud in respect to the practitioner’s dealings with his clients and their money. Continue reading “Gross overcharging penalties surveyed”

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Important new case on when retainer by multiple clients will be taken to be several rather than joint

I have always been a bit dubious about the proposition to be found in the texts that in the absence of specification one way or the other, a multiple retainer is presumed to be a several retainer (so that the clients are severally responsible for their fair share of the costs) rather than a joint retainer (so that the clients are each responsible for the whole of the costs associated with acting for either or both).  The South Australian Supreme Court has gone through the authorities and said that there is no presumption, but the onus of proving a joint retainer falls on the solicitor, and the mere fact that joint instructions are given or that representation advances joint interests is not sufficient to found an inferred agreement to that effect: D A Starke Pty Ltd v Yard [2012] SASC 19.

So: if you’re one of several clients your lawyer has in relation to one matter, and you want to limit your liability to your fair share of the costs, you should stipulate for ‘several liability’, and if you’re a lawyer, and want to be able to recover all of the costs from each client, you should stipulate for ‘joint and several liability’.  And if you’re one of a number of clients against whom a lawyer is seeking to recover fees, wherever the written costs agreement is silent on the question, then so long as you believe that it was not actually agreed between you, albeit by implication rather than express communication, you should not agree to pay anything more than your fair share, which might be 50% if the work benefitted each of the clients equally (as where husband and wife conduct litigation over jointly owned matrimonial property) but which might be quite different from the other client’s/s’ faire share, as in this case.

Two things occur to me.  First, in a joint retainer, one client may well be an associated third party payer vis-a-vis the lawyer in respect of that client’s promise to pay the other client’s fair share of the lawyer’s fees.  I cannot immediately think of how this might affect the solicitor-client relation, but no doubt it might.  Secondly, in a regime such as that under the Legal Profession Acts where costs agreements must be written or evidenced in writing, all the major terms of the agreement are required to fulfil that requirement.  This case was decided by reference to the law of the one state which does not have a Legal Profession Act (South Australia).  A lawyer seeking to rely on an implied term (and therefore one very likely not evidenced in writing) might have difficulty in establishing such a term by virtue of the writing requirements.

What the Supreme Court of South Australia’s Justice Kourakis said on this subject is set out below:

Continue reading “Important new case on when retainer by multiple clients will be taken to be several rather than joint”

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Accord and satisfaction as a defence to a suit for taxation

[Edited and updated 13.2.12] I have two taxations at the moment where accord and satisfaction is pleaded as a defence, in proceedings governed by the Legal Profession Act 2004 (Vic).  In the first, the client and the solicitor cut a deal in relation to costs, and the client subsequently sought to tax the costs.  In the second, a non-associated third party payer and the client cut a deal in relation to the amount the former was obliged to pay the latter pursuant to a loan agreement, and the third party payer has now brought an application against the client’s solicitors for taxation.

Accord and satisfaction is a litigation estoppel.  It serves a similar function to res judicata where the original dispute is quelled by contractual agreement (i.e. a ‘settlement’) rather than by judicial determination. It is what stops a party who settles a pre-litigious dispute from suing on it, and, depending on how the proceeding is disposed of (withdrawn, discontinued, struck out, dismissed, judgment for one party), may also be what stops a party to litigation who settles it from re-instituting it (res judicata flowing from the Court’s orders disposing of the proceeding is the other possibility).

Helpfully, the NSW Court of Appeal recently drew the authorities on accord and satisfaction together in El-Mir v Risk [2005] NSWCA 215 and provided a cute little restatement of the law, which is reproduced below.  There seems to be little authority on accord and satisfaction preventing taxation where disputes in relation to the quantification of liability for legal fees are settled before the institution of taxation proceedings. Certainly, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had no difficulty with the application of accord and satisfaction as a bar to taxation: Michael J Benenson Associates, Inc v Orthopedic Network of New Jersey 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 23559; 54 Fed. Appx. 33, and the Federal Court seems to have assumed the possibility in Amos v Monsour Pty Ltd (formerly Monsour Legal Costs Pty Ltd) [2010] FCA 741, but in neither case was the question argued. Does anyone know of any other useful authorities? Continue reading “Accord and satisfaction as a defence to a suit for taxation”

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Incorporated legal practitioners required to give consumers itemised bills within 7 days

From the latest newsletter of Queensland’s Legal Services Commissioner, we learn that he is tentatively of the view that incorporated legal practices are required to give itemised bills within 7 days of a ‘consumer’ client’s request.  Certain others may be in other situations as well, by virtue of the extended operation of the Australian Consumer Law as a law of the Commonwealth provided for by s. 6 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (good luck working out what that provision means in a hurry). I raised this possibility back here, and have been meaning to get around to working out exactly how s. 161A of the Fair Trading Act 1999 (Vic) operates ever since.  Section 161A is the Victorian analogue of the Queensland provision s. 55 referred to below.  Kudos to the Commissioner for putting out for comment a discussion draft of a future regulatory guide ‘The Application of the Australian Consumer Law to Lawyers’.  See also the ACCC’s publication ‘The Professions and the Australian Consumer Law’.  The Commissioner’s tentative analysis is reproduced below.  What I want to know next is what the consequences are if s. 101 of the Australian Consumer Law is breached. Continue reading “Incorporated legal practitioners required to give consumers itemised bills within 7 days”

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The Keddies overcharging civil case no. 1

Liu v Barakat, unreported, District Court of NSW, Curtis J, 8 November 2011 is the latest in an ongoing scandal in NSW in relation to overcharging by a prominent personal injuries practice which traded as Keddies, but has subsequently been gobbled up by a publicly listed company.  Many are unhappy at the strike rate of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner in the whole affair (the sole remaining disciplinary prosecution is two and a half years old and not heading to hearing until April next year), but now the District Court has given judgment in a case finding what appears to amount to fraudulent misrepresentation in relation to the billing of about $69,000 (reduced on a ‘but say’ basis to about $64,000) in a personal injuries case where liability was admitted before Keddies got in the harness, and where the proper charge was about $21,000.  Justinian‘s Richard Ackland has the background and latest here.

The partnership apparently bungled the settlement of a taxation allowing the claim to slip through to judgment, and Judge Curtis of the NSW District Court ended up ordering Keddies to repay to the client the difference between what they charged and what they were entitled to charge.  The reasons provide food for thought for those out of time to commence taxation because the judge found that the bills had within them implied representations that the amounts billed were properly chargeable at law.  He reduced the fees chargeable by Keddies to the amount in fact properly chargeable at law, something which would ordinarily be achieved in a taxation.  Such logic might be employed in many cases in the 5 years after a bill during which the client is out of time for taxation but within the 6 year limitation period for prosecuting a misleading and deceptive conduct claim.

The case will be seized on by opponents of hourly billing, and perhaps properly so (the first 6 minutes or part thereof charged for sending a pro forma welcome letter which required only the insertion of the client’s name is an example of why minimum charges of 6 minutes are abhorrent when applied literally, for example).  But it really appears to be a case about simple dishonesty (by whom is not made clear), because in the main this was not a case where the clients were billed outrageously albeit according to the terms of a contractual agreement which bound them.  I say that because if there was any innocent explanation advanced by the Keddies partners for the conduct the most obvious explanation for which was someone’s dishonesty, it was not recorded in the judgment.  This was a case where, in the main, work was charged for which was not done (most likely as in the case of the second 6 minutes or part thereof billed for the welcome letter), or not done by a person whose contractually agreed rate warranted the charge for the time spent.  For example:

  • A secretary was impermissibly charged at partners’ rates ($460 per hour).
  • One hour’s work was charged on 4 October 2005 for drafting the costs agreement which had been signed on 30 September 2005, and an associated explanatory document at  senior litigation lawyer rates, when in fact all that was required was the insertion of the client’s name.  The Court held that the rate which would have been properly chargeable under the costs agreement had that been the appropriate method of billing was 6 minutes of a secretary’s time at secretaries’ rates. No argument appears to have been advanced that this was not work done for the client, but the lawyers’ own costs of entering into a contract to which they were a party and which they wished to propose the terms of.  There is no record of any evidence having been given that the time entry was a mistake, and it is hard to see how the recording of time beyond (at most) one block of 6 minutes or part thereof could have been anything other than outright dishonesty on at least someone’s part within Keddies, even if this activity was properly taken to be work engaged in by the solicitors on the client’s behalf.
  • A charge for two blocks of 6 minutes or part thereof was charged at the secretaries’ rate for reading a letter advising the time, date and place of a medical appointment, a further charge of two such blocks for ‘considering’ that letter, and a further charge of two such blocks for advising the plaintiff by letter of that information.  The total bill for work which it is hard to see taking 5 minutes of a secretary’s time was $108 (for which incidentally, just to keep this real, you can currently have a linguine with fresh sardines, pine nuts, currants and saffron, a gravlax, three glasses of Italian prosecco, a chocolate pudding with peanut butter ice cream and a strawberry mousse with jelly and meringues at Gill’s Diner).
  • The plaintiff was charged $184 (4 blocks of 6 minutes or part thereof at partner rates) for reading, then considering, a letter which said ‘We enclose authority for execution by your client to enable us to obtain documentation from the Department of Immigration and multicultural and indigenous affairs.  Please have your client sign the authority and returned to us as soon as possible.’
  • The plaintiff was charged $131 (3 blocks of 6 minutes or part thereof at partner rates) for reading an email the non-formal parts of which read ‘Rcv’d’.  (What a freaking joke!) She was charged the same amount for reading the email to which that was a reply, the non-formal part of which read ‘I refer to our telephone call this morning.  I have been directed by Assessor J Snell, to inform CARS: 1.  The CARS hearing date on 14 September 2005 has been vacated — please cancel the interpreter arranged by CARS. The CARS hearing date has been rebooked for 17 November 2006 at 10 am — please rebook a Mandarin interpreter.’

It will be interesting to see the response of the police, the NSW Legal Services Commissioner and the Council of the NSW Law Society to the judgment, especially in light of the fact that the plaintiff’s complaint to the Commissioner was officially withdrawn, a fact which did not of course prevent the Commissioner from continuing to investigate it: s. 512 Legal Profession Act 2004 (NSW).  Somewhat surprisingly, I learn from that section, that the withdrawal of the complaint also does not prevent the complainant from re-lodging it: sub-s. (5). Continue reading “The Keddies overcharging civil case no. 1”

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Obligations of expert witnesses to be transparent about costs blowouts

Ireland as Executor of the Estate of the Gordon v Retallack [2011] NSWSC 1096 is the subject of this sister post.  I thought this paragraph might also come in useful for litigators and costs lawyers:

’19.  The fault is not however entirely that of [the solicitors]. Professional experts have an obligation to behave promptly, frankly and openly when or if they become aware that their estimate of fees and expenses is likely to be materially exceeded. They must inform their principal and provide an opportunity for an informed choice to be made – whether or not to proceed with the engagement or to re-negotiate its terms and extent. It is commercially unacceptable for a professional expert to remain silent, to complete the work and then to present a bill significantly in excess of the original estimate – as if it were a fait accompli. Such conduct is unacceptable whether it is merely forgetful, or just sharp.’

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Who can be pinged for costs disclosure defaults under the Legal Practice Act, 1996?

The Legal Services Commissioner’s office and its predecessors have apparently long taken the view that the obligation in s. 86 of the Legal Practice Act, 1996 to provide certain costs disclosures to clients at the time of retainer is imposed on the solicitor with responsibility for the file regardless of whether or not the retainer is with them personally, with a firm of which they are a member, or with a company of which they are a director.  The Law Institute had a go at a solicitor on this basis in 1992 and 1999: Victorian Lawyers RPA Ltd v Vernon, unreported T0070 of 2002, 17 May 2002, Registrar Howell and Victorian Lawyers RPA Ltd v GAVS [1999] VLPT 4. Those attempts failed, but not squarely on the basis that the charges were incompetent for having been brought against the wrong person.  Now the question has been fully argued and decided contrary to the Commissioner’s position. According to VCAT, the obligation was prima facie imposed exclusively on the retained entity. In the case of incorporated legal practitioners, there were such provisions under the 1996 Act attributing liability to directors, but not non-director employees.  Quite amazing really that this point was first squarely decided 15 years into the 1996 Act’s operation. Continue reading “Who can be pinged for costs disclosure defaults under the Legal Practice Act, 1996?”

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Duties in relation to costs of solicitors acting for deceased estates

Ireland as Executor of the Estate of the Gordon v Retallack [2011] NSWSC 1096 is a decision by a trial judge disallowing certain of the plaintiff’s solicitors’ costs as between solicitor and client on the basis that they were unnecessarily incurred.  Justice Pembroke exercised power under the Civil Procedure Act, 1995 (NSW) and the Court’s inherent jurisdiction where:

’13.  There was no need for expert evidence to resolve any legitimate question of construction arising out of Clauses 4, 5 and 16 of the will. There appeared to be a misapprehension that the resolution of the questions of construction would be assisted by evidence of the various commercial methodologies that might be utilised to achieve the testator’s objective. This was simply woolly thinking. On several occasions, senior counsel for the first defendant submitted, with admirable restraint, that the case could and should have been conducted on one document, namely the will. He was right of course. That would have been the conventional approach. Instead, I was presented with a plethora of highly complex and unnecessary accounting and taxation evidence. In addition, a great deal of irrelevant factual evidence was adduced – for no purpose and to no avail.’

His Honour made the following observations in relation to the obligations of solicitors acting for executors of deceased estates: Continue reading “Duties in relation to costs of solicitors acting for deceased estates”

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Solicitors’ exposure to falling between two stools in solicitor-client taxations revealed

Update, 16.2.12: See now Ipex ITG Pty Ltd v McGarvie [2011] VSC 675.

Original post: A recent decision of the Supreme Court’s Costs Court means that solicitors have only a non-extendable 60 days in which to seek taxation of counsel’s fees, even though clients and third party payers have an extendable 12 months in which to seek taxation of the solicitors’ fees, including disbursements such as counsel’s fees: Kong v Henty Jepson & Kelly Pty Ltd, unreported, Associate Justice Wood, 4 April 2011.  The same result was reached in I.J.R. Homes v MDM Legal Services SCI, unreported, Associate Justice Wood, 12 September 2011, and the Costs Judge’s comments in that order are reproduced at the end of this post too.  Unless the barrister may be joined to and bound as against the solicitor to the outcome of the taxation of the solicitors’ fees initiated after the expiry of the time allowed to the solicitor for seeking taxation of the counsel’s fees, the solicitors run the risk of the client being liable to them only for the taxed down amount of counsel’s fees while the solicitors remain liable to the barrister for the full whack.

And the solicitor cannot get around the problem by seeking to procure their client to seek taxation of the counsel’s fees directly against counsel, because, the Supreme Court says, clients have no standing to do so.  Though the Court has a discretion under s. 3.4.42 to join ‘concerned law practices’ and order that they be bound by the outcome, it did not make such orders in the Kong Case joining the barrister, though for reasons peculiar to that case, the Court’s reluctance to do so may not be as great in future. All of that applies where the traditional relations between client, solicitor and counsel are entered into; where the client has a costs agreement with the barrister, things are different, and less problematic for solicitors.

But for the fact that solicitors tend to disregard the law of costs and carry on as they always have, no matter what the law is and how it is changed, four reactions might be expected in Victoria and the many other states with analogous statutory provisions:

1.   Solicitors will commence prophylactic applications for taxation of counsel’s fees within 60 days after service on them of the fee slip, in case the client later seeks to tax the solicitors’ bills (but they may well have to pay the costs of doing so out of their own pockets);

2.  Solicitors will require counsel to contract directly with clients in relation to fees, which many counsel will not be prepared to do;

3.  Solicitors might seek to contract out of clients’ rights to review counsel’s fees as disbursements on their bills, or to contract out of their rights to review counsel’s fees as disbursements on their bills, once their right to seek review of counsel’s fees has expired, but that is likely to be effective only where the clients and third party payers are ‘sophisticated’ within the s. 3.4.2 meaning of that term, since agreements about costs which purport to contract out of normal (as opposed to ‘sophisticated’) clients’ and/or third party payers’ rights to taxation are void: see ss. 3.4.26(5) and 3.4.31; or

4.  Solicitors might make it a term of their costs agreement with counsel that counsel indemnify the solicitors against any difference between the amount paid by the solicitors to the barrister and the amount payable by the client to the solicitors in respect of those same fees, but any such agreement would have to have a degree of sophistication, to avoid counsel taking the rap for a solicitor’s default (such as where counsel provide adequate information for the solicitor to provide disclosure of counsel’s fees to the client, but the solicitor fails to do so, with the result that the solicitor’s taxed costs, including disbursements such as counsel’s fees, are reduced under s. 3.4.17(4).

How are similar problems treated in other states’ and territories’ taxing and review jurisdictions?

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Client joy to abound in draft national profession legislation’s costs provisions

For a long time after the new national profession legislation is introduced, if it is introduced in its present form, many lawyers are likely to find themselves restricted to charging scale, and not being able to recover their costs until there has been a taxation in the Costs Court, even when they have negotiated a costs agreement.

Reproduced below is that part of the proposed national law regulating lawyers that relates to legal costs.  The whole draft law may be downloaded here, and it is hoped that this will be the final version to be adopted by Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory, home to about 85% of Australia’s lawyers.  Truly scary stuff:

  1. There is an obligation that all legal costs be ‘no more than fair and reasonable in all the circumstances’ and that ‘in particular’, they be ‘(a) proportionately and reasonably incurred; and (b) proportionate and reasonable in amount’: s. 4.3.4(1);
  2. A costs agreement will be only ‘prima facie’ evidence that costs disclosed in it are fair and reasonable in that sense: s. 4.3.4(4); and
  3. Non-compliance with any of the costs disclosure obligations will render the costs agreement void: s. 4.3.9(1)(a) and the client need not pay them [on scale…] until they have been taxed as between solicitor and own client.

The first point really introduces into the Act fairness and reasonableness requirements as to the amount billed which presently only apply expressly at the moment of taxation, and which are found in r. 63.61 of the Supreme Court Rules, which says ‘(1) On a taxation of the costs payable to a solicitor by the solicitor’s client all costs reasonably incurred and of reasonable amount shall be allowed.’ The present s. 3.4.44 of the Legal Profession Act, 2004 is more limited in its restraint of billing, in the case of negotiated costs agreements. It says ‘(1) In conducting a review of legal costs, the Costs Court must consider- (a) whether or not it was reasonable to carry out the work to which the legal costs relate; and (b) whether or not the work was carried out in a reasonable manner’: nothing about the reasonableness of the amount billed per se.

Since virtually no lawyers I have anything to do with manage to comply to the letter with the existing not dissimilar costs disclosure obligations, it seems very likely that there will be a lot of retainers in which the client will be able to establish the voidness of the costs agreements.  Lawyers will then be left to seek recovery of their costs on scale, but may not have recorded the information necessary to prepare a scale bill in taxable form which will do justice to the work they have done.  Fun times ahead for costs lawyers!

Compare the situation presently in Victoria where non-compliance with the costs disclosure obligations only [I never thought I would say ‘only’] means that the client need not pay the fees until they have been taxed as between solicitor and own client, and on that taxation, the solicitor is presumptively liable to pay its costs, and the taxed costs are to be discounted by a proportion that reflects the seriousness of the non-disclosure.  Presently, the costs agreement will be disregarded only when it is set aside by VCAT (a jurisdiction which looks to fall away), or where by virtue of a material non-disclosure, it is disregarded pursuant to s. 3.4.44A of the Legal Profession Act, 2004, which has rarely happened. Continue reading “Client joy to abound in draft national profession legislation’s costs provisions”

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Misconduct and Costs

I’m giving a seminar on Wednesday: see http://bit.ly/npDJVY.  I’m talking about Misconduct and Costs. The Supreme Court of Victoria’s Costs Judge, Associate Justice Jamie Wood, is talking about best practice in taxations of costs, and Liz Harris, the founder of Harris Costs Lawyers, is talking about costs agreements and risk management.  I think it’s going to be a really good seminar.  Now, I have an offer and a request.  I have two free tickets to give away.  If you would like one, let me know.

As to the request: foolishly, I have promised to tell those attending the answers to the following questions:

  • Is it charging by the hour that stinks or the abuse of charging by the hour?
  • Will fixed fees be any less problematic?
  • For what activities is it permissible to charge time-based fees?
  • Can you charge two clients for one piece of work?
  • When does overcharging become gross overcharging?

There is no clear answer to the third question, except perhaps in the heads of taxing officers, and little commentary that I can find.  If you have any experiences of what is allowed and disallowed in taxations between solicitor and own client (as opposed to taxations between parties on a solicitor-client basis) which are conducted by reference to a costs agreement specifying charges at an hourly rate,  I would be interested to hear them.

Similarly any experiences of costs disputes involving fixed fees.

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Lawyer haters: some schadenfreude

Martinez v Morris [2011] FMCA 478 will be enjoyed by those who take pleasure in the suffering of lawyers.  A well known national law firm with over 500 staff acted for a man.  They had a low opinion of him, and so required that his wife promise to pay his fees.  Since her promise was made directly to the law firm, she was an ‘associated third party payer’ to whom disclosure obligations in relation to costs estimates and the manner of charging and so on were owed.  The obligations were not satisfied though.  Sure enough, the husband did not pay the firm’s fees.  So they sued his wife.  She did not defend, ignorant of s. 317(1) of the Legal Profession Act, 2004 (NSW) which said that by virtue of the disclosure defaults, she need not pay the fees until there had been what used to be known as a solicitor-client taxation at the solicitors’ expense.  Default judgment was obtained and no attempt was made to set it aside.  And then the firm set out to bankrupt her.  A creditor’s petition resulted in a sequestration order.  It was the end of the road; they’d got their pound of flesh and could move a trustee in bankruptcy in to scoop up her worldly possessions, and take away any income she might earn, to restore the hole in their profits.

Then some bright spark alerted the wife to the solicitors’ problem.  ‘Too late!’ you might say to yourself diving for a statement of res judicata, if you have not been reading my blog properly (see this post and this one about Quaresmini v Crouch & Lindon (a firm) [2010] FMCA 750 and Chadwick Lawyers v McMullen [2009] FMCA 992, both Queensland cases to which no reference was made in the NSW case at hand).  But no, not too late: Federal Magistrate Driver set aside the sequestration order — that is he unbankrupted the wife — and completely sicked the solicitors on costs for good measure.  In the process, he looked beyond the default judgment, rendering it worthless for the purposes of bankrupting the wife without it having been set aside.  And now, no doubt, the wife has a right to set aside the default judgment ex debito justitiae (as of right), so the firm cannot substitute the Sheriff for the trustee in bankruptcy.  The wife may still have to pay her husband’s legal fees; whether she does or not will depend on whether the firm can be bothered having the NSW equivalent of a taxation at which the taxed bills may be reduced on account of the wholesale costs disclosure defaults. Whatever the case, she won’t have to pay them for some time, and there must be a real issue about whether the lawyers are entitled to interest since the bills were originally given.

The costs order was that the law firm pay the costs of the creditors’ petition in which they were successful as well as in the application to set aside the sequestration order in which they were unsuccessful.  His Honour reasoned as follows at [16] to [17]:

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More on the indemnity principle

Up in NSW, the system of reviewing legal costs is very different from here in Victoria.  It is done on the papers by non-judges.  As District Court Judge Peter Johnstone said in Bellevarde Constructions Pty Ltd v CPC Energy Pty Ltd [2011] NSWDC 55:

‘the costs assessment process is a statutory process that is neither wholly judicial, nor wholly adversarial, as there are strong elements of an inquisitorial nature involved. These features of the process are important to understand when evaluating decisions as to a matter of law made in the course of the assessment.’

A costs assessor was assessing the party party costs payable by one party to a more successful party in litigation.  He satisifed himself that the indemnity principle was not breached by perusing the costs agreement which regulated the solicitor-client costs payable by the more successful party to its own lawyers, and was ‘satisfied that the amount claimed by the costs applicant is no greater than the amount for which the costs applicant would be liable pursuant to those agreements’.

Judge Johnstone said, applying Shaw v Yarranova Pty Ltd [2011] VSCA 55, that a costs assessor need not take evidence of the actual amount charged by the more successful party’s lawyers in every case, but must do so when there is evidence casting doubt on the proposition that the claim for party party costs was no greater in total — not per item — than the solicitor-client costs.  Here there was sufficient evidence to cast such doubt, and the costs assessor was wrong not to have insisted on evidence as to the amount payable on a solicitor-client basis.

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Victorian Supreme Court takes relaxed approach to conditions for validity of no-win no-fee costs agreements

Legal Services Board v DF [2011] VSC 292 will be of considerable interest to those who draft and work within no-win no-fee retainers. Justice Karin Emerton found that though Victoria’s repealed Legal Practice Act, 1996 implicitly prohibited the charging of uplift fees otherwise than upon a ‘successful outcome’  it was open to parties to provide for the payment of an uplift in circumstances which could not be described, in ordinary parlance, as a ‘successful outcome’, such as where the client terminates the solicitor’s retainer.  Her Honour also found that ‘if you recover any money from your case’ was a sufficient definition of the ‘successful outcome’, finding that objectively construed, what those words meant were ‘if you recover any compensation’, as opposed to costs.  The decision will be of assistance in interpreting the similar provisions under Victoria’s Legal Profession Act, 2004 and the other states’ (South Australia excepted) equivalents.

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