Report comment

The Judge is right that the costs are disproportionate to the damages. It was not a particularly complex case. As another has said, the headline suggests that Thompsons stood to gain £72k from this. Even prior to assessment, the element of the bill which related to their costs was only about 27% of the total, inclusive of VAT. I'm assuming that QWOCS did not apply to the case given the large ATE premium.
The advent of QWOCS and costs budgeting should mean these bills will not be run up in similar future cases. There also needs to be more pro-active efforts to resolve cases whether by early Part 36 (which surely could have happened here) of mediation.