The clients engaged the firm of solicitors to act for them in litigation. Pursuant to the terms of the retainer, the solicitors submitted a number of interim bills to the clients, some of which were for profit costs only and some of which were for disbursements only. None of the bills included both a charge for profit costs and for disbursements. After the clients had terminated the retainer, they brought a claim seeking assessment of all the interim bills pursuant to section 70 of the Solicitors Act 1974. The solicitors contended that the bills which had been rendered more than one year before the bringing of the claim could not be assessed pursuant to section 70 because the bills were so-called “statute bills”, which by section 70 could only be assessed where an application was made within one year of the delivery of the bill. On a preliminary issue the costs master held that bills were a series of bills on account concluding in a final “statute bill” rather than a series of statute bills. The judge dismissed the solicitors’ appeal, holding that the interim bills presented by the firm were not statute bills because they did not detail both profit costs and disbursements.
On the firm’s second appeal—
Held, appeal allowed. It was not stated anywhere in the Solicitors Act 1974 that a statute bill had to include both profit costs and disbursements attributable to the period covered by the bill. Nor was there any justification in deriving such an approach from previous authority. The approach contended for by the clients would lead to unsatisfactory practical implications. Separate billing for profit costs and disbursements was common in the modern digital age of billing. Therefore, a bill did not require the inclusion of both profit costs and disbursements for the period it covered to be classified as a statute bill under the 1974 Act. Accordingly, the fact that the bills presented by the firm contained either profit costs or disbursements did not prevent them from being interim statute bills for the purposes of the Act (paras 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 41).
Simon Browne QC (instructed directly) for the firm.
Mark Friston (instructed by W Davies Solicitors, Woking) for the clients.