A judge sitting in a dispute over unpaid legal fees has chosen not to recuse himself despite it emerging that he was owed money by the firm making the claim.

Hugh Sims QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court in Ince Gordon Dadds LLP v Mellitah Oil & Gas BV, explained that while reading papers on the case he had identified a previous professional engagement with a predecessor firm, Gordon Dadds. 

After consulting with his clerks, Sims said he needed to disclose the link in advance of the hearing as it was potentially arguable that it might lead to the suggestion of bias if he did not. In an email to the parties, Sims said he had been instructed by Nicholas Yapp, then of Gordon Dadds, on connected matters from 2014 to 2018. On one of the files the case record indicated that fees of £7,700 plus VAT were outstanding.

At the start of the current hearing, lawyers for the defendant asked Sims to recuse himself following the disclosure. He declined, indicating that he would give reasons in his judgment. In that judgment, Sims said the outstanding fee amounted to only 1% of his work in progress and was not enough cause to justify his recusal.

‘The implicit thrust of what was being submitted was that in some way because there was an outstanding debt in the sum disclosed a reasonable and fair-minded observer would conclude that this would in some way induce a judge to act in favour of the person owing the debt, presumably on the basis it might in some way curry favour,’ said Sims. ‘Put in that way it seems to me a reasonable and fair-minded observer would discount that being a real danger, knowing about the judicial oath and the training and experience of a judge, and I also reject it.’

The deputy judge added that the greater risk might have been inadvertent communication in relation to the debt. He instructed his clerks to ensure there was no communication.

The underlying case was a claim from Ince Gordon Dadds to recover £1m in legal fees for advising on arbitrations relating to a major civil-engineering project off the Libya coast. The former client had applied to set aside a default judgment entered by Master Pester from 2021 which required payment. Sims dismissed the application, although he suggested the defendant had ‘real prospects of making some potential in-roads’ into the judgment sum on a separate assessment.