A City firm’s appeal against a senior costs judge’s decision to assess its costs at nil has been dismissed as the judge was found to be ‘entirely right’ in his decision.

Part of the appeal, brought by The Winros Partnership, formerly Rosenblatt Solicitors, was dealt with in an earlier judgment. The second judgment, by Mr Justice Marcus Smith handed down last month, centred on the firm’s appeal against a ruling that the law firm’s 2012 bill was not a statute bill and so the firm’s costs were assessed at nil as well as the senior costs judge’s decision to dismiss an abuse of process argument.

In the original case, Rosenblatt acted for environmental consultancy Global Energy against a former associate accused of misappropriating an opportunity to develop innovative technology. Relations between the parties ‘deteriorated’ and Rosenblatt terminated one of the three conditional fee agreements by reason of Global Energy’s repudiatory breach of contract, the judgment said.

The judge found ‘no category difference between unjust enrichment claims where the contract is discharged and those cases where the contract is regularly performed’, but that in The Winros Partnership v Global Energy Horizons Corporation he was ‘in no doubt that there is no room for a claim in unjust enrichment’.

Dismissing the appeal for ‘substantially the reasons advanced by the senior costs judge’, the judge said: ‘[The third CFA] was, in terms of the services provided, straightforward. However, the risks, although easy to anticipate, were hard to calculate in advance and were considerable. That is because this was a contingent fee agreement and the difference between winning and losing was in financial terms, according to the contract, enormous.

‘Equally clearly, the parties would have appreciated that a great deal could happen between the start of the operation of CFA-3 and the resolution of the claim.

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‘The question is whether the existence of a choice for Rosenblatt to end CFA-3 by other means, renders a restitutionary remedy possible. In my judgement (sic), it cannot, because CFA-3 has already articulated what is to happen in this kind of case.’

He added: ‘The effective dismissal of the claim by the senior costs judge was entirely right, and I dismiss the appeal against his decision.’