Administration of estates - solicitors administering estate entitled to charge both for time spent on administration and scale fee based on value of estate - value element to be calculated on reducing scale against bands adjusted for inflation

Jemma Trust Co Ltd v Liptrott and others: CA (Lords Justice Peter Gibson, Mance and Longmore sitting with an assessor): 24 October 2003

Solicitors were engaged in administration of an estate submitted bills claiming two sets of charges, one based on time spent administering the estate, the other on the value of the estate.

The costs judge on a preliminary issue in detailed assessment of the costs held that they were not entitled to charge a percentage of the value of the estate at the same time as charging for the time spent on the administration.

The solicitors appealed.

Justin Fenwick QC and Nicholas Bacon (instructed by Kippax Beaumont Lewis, Bolton) for the solicitors; Andrew Post (instructed by The Owen-Kenny Partnership, Chichester) for the claimant; Richard Drabble QC and Matthew Collings (instructed by the Law Society) for the Law Society as interested party.

Held, allowing the appeal, that it was still appropriate for solicitors engaged in administering an estate and charging for time spent on administration to charge a separate scale fee based on the value of the estate, provided that it was fair and reasonable remuneration in the light of all the circumstances; that it would usually be right to reduce the value element percentage by reference to a regressive scale; and that the scale envisaged in Maltby v DJ Freeman [1978]

1 WLR 431 was appropriate although the bands to which it applied should be increased to allow for inflation.