How in The name of God, can you run up a Million+ bill on a "He Said, She Said" Case??

Dimple said:
I'm even more confused now
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The more minutes the Lawyers bill, the more the rates ramp up.

The first ten minutes is cheap enough but once you have been talking to them for more than an hour or so you are so screwed that you can no longer back out and just have to keep going!

There is a bit in Samuel Peyps diaries about his Lawyer friends boasting about how they routinely fleece their clients through tedious litigation!

Nothing ever changes! :rolleyes:
 
OldCoals said:
So the CPS decided not to proceed with the case but the Judge at the libel trials says she is telling the truth.

Can of worms.
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Very different things.

Anyone is allowed to form an opinion on limited evidence, in the case of this woman her own experience which cannot be contradicted. The judge ruled that the defamation claim has failed to prove on the balance of probabilities she was lying, i.e. she is most likely telling the truth.

However, that doesn't mean anyone can prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court.
 
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dowie said:
What is a 'win fee' and who collects it? Surely they have an hourly rate and they present a bill, what justifies the extra 100% on top of that?
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It's a success fee. Without it you'd just get charged more upfront.

If anything it makes sense for legal aid cases as it minimises the cost to the taxpayer.
 
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As for the madness of the fees, as least she won, else the taxpayer would be footing her legal bill due to legal aid!
Fees seem utterly insane.

edit-interesting thing the win bonus, its like I get paid double to do the job I am employed to do properly, else I still get massively overpaid
 
Why did he even pursue a defamation case against the woman? She couldn't afford to give him the £300k he was asking for even if he won his case.

The end result is that instead of it being left as the CPS not pursuing a criminal case because of a lack of evidence, the public will know that an impartial judge has come to the conclusion that she was more likely telling the truth than not. Also a massive legal bill.
 
muon said:
It's a success fee. Without it you'd just get charged more upfront.

If anything it makes sense for legal aid cases as it minimises the cost to the taxpayer.
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sorry but that doesn't really explain anything though, a 'win fee' is a 'success fee' is just using different terminology and I can already see that you get it added on at the end...

it just seems rather dodgy, what is to stop the lawyers making it 200% or 500% - are their any regulations stating how much this 'win fee' can be?

I mean it is Freddie who has to pay the legal fees, supposing he sued one person and then has to pay costs and their lawyers say he owes £400K + their extra special success fee of 5 million?

are there rules fixing these special fees at 100%?
 
thanks, that clears things up

though this bit seems at odds with the article:

you will however have to pay the success fee to your lawyer. It is therefore very important that your lawyer properly informs you at the very beginning of the success fee that will be payable if you win your case.
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the article seems to imply that it is Freddie who is forking out for the costs + success fee?

In his ruling Mr Justice Nicol ordered Starr to pay Ms Ward's legal costs which her lawyers have put at £1million.
'I order the claimant to pay the defendant's costs,' he said after accepting that Ms Ward had proved the truth of her allegations.
Ms Ward's lawyer's later estimated the amount to be around £400,000 plus a 100 per cent win fee and VAT, totalling around £960,000.
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is that just a daily fail journalist getting it wrong and actually Ms Ward is going to have to fork out £400k?

do most firms charge the full 100% for the success fee... in the same way that when Universities were given flexibility on fees the good ones mostly just opted to charge the full 9k...

good to see that at least the ambulance chasers are limited at 25% fees
 
It depends on the circumstances and when litigation commenced. There was a huge overhaul in the way legal costs could be recovered at trail a few years ago. The current regime / general rule is that you cannot recover CFA success fees from the losing party at trial.

So it's probably either bad reporting or this has been going on since before April 2013. As the legal costs are so high, I anticipate it's the latter.
 
Orionaut said:
At the "Legal Aid" rates that were being discussed elsewhere recently, this represents over 20,000 Man Hours!
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Maybe I've misread the article or the article is missing some detail (very likely given the source) but I can't find any mention of the case being done at legal aid rates.

Standard, commercial rates are much higher.
 
Nitefly said:
It depends on the circumstances and when litigation commenced. There was a huge overhaul in the way legal costs could be recovered at trail a few years ago. The current regime / general rule is that you cannot recover CFA success fees from the losing party at trial.

So it's probably either bad reporting or this has been going on since before April 2013. As the legal costs are so high, I anticipate it's the latter.
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OK that makes more sense

is there anything limiting the rate they can bill at, since it is the other guy who is going to be stung with it in the event he/she loses
 
Bloomfield said:
d6 and d20 are 6 and 20 sided dice. The £2d20 per minute means you roll 2 20 sided dice and whatever they add up to is what they charge per minute.
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I work with Solicitors/Lawyers all day and I've never heard of that but thanks for clearing that up.
This is a company I deal with a lot and this story may interest you - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...500-compensation-patient-burnt-hot-drink.html

ShakenNstirred said:
Lawyers are legalised crooks, the cost has no relation to the work done
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During the late 90s I was in a rock band called Legal Thieves which had two Lawyers in the band and it was named by them.
 
dowie said:
OK that makes more sense

is there anything limiting the rate they can bill at, since it is the other guy who is going to be stung with it in the event he/she loses
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An award of costs is usually an award of proper and reasonable costs, so there is usual a round of agreement for costs between parties post-trial (if sums aren't agreed in advance). There can be costs hearings post-trial in which the court will assess the true monies involved. Again, how much you can chip away will depend in the circumstances. Some firms have fees that are eyebrow raising - if that's who a corporate party instructs then on a contentious matter then it will probably be relating to something ££££££££ where the hourly rates are the last thing anyone cares about. Instruct Clifford Chance for 3 years over a ridiculous boundary dispute and the likelihood of recovering all of those costs becomes slim :p
 
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I once asked a certain magic circle firm (not cc) for a quote on a matter. In the same paragraph got told that their fees would be 250k + and max damages I was looking at if lost was likely 10k...(negative prdcedent ofc, but difficult to put monetary value on that )
 
Dimple said:
I work with Solicitors/Lawyers all day and I've never heard of that but thanks for clearing that up. [..]
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I was making a joke about the high cost and apparent degree of variability in legal fees. I used a reference to a method of generating randomness that's very familiar to me (from RPGs) and apparently not as widely known as I thought it was.
 
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