The High Court has upheld a Legal Costs Adjudicator’s decision disallowing 26 invoices totalling £1,412,598 sterling claimed by Piotr Skoczylas for non-legal research, advisory and consultancy services connected with litigation over the 2011 recapitalisation of Irish Life and Permanent Group Holdings plc.
In a judgment delivered on 17 January 2023, Mr Justice Alexander Owens ruled that Skoczylas had not shown the adjudicator was wrong to reject the amounts as allowable outlay. The court confirmed the disallowances under section 161(4)(a) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015.
Skoczylas was one of the applicants in the earlier case and represented himself. He had held senior banking positions and had postgraduate qualifications in finance. He said an English limited liability partnership of which he was a member had supplied the invoiced services. The invoices described professional, non-legal input intended to assist with the proceedings, but did not set out the nature of the advice, the expertise used or why it was needed.
The costs orders in his favour included out-of-pocket expenses for two interlocutory applications in 2012 and an award in 2017 of 40% of allowable outlay, to be taxed if the parties could not agree. The judgment records that the disputed invoices were submitted to the Legal Costs Adjudicator in pursuit of those awards.
The court said party-and-party costs do not provide full reimbursement. A litigant cannot recover the value or cost of general expertise used to research, prepare or present a case, whether that input comes from the litigant, an associated person or an outside consultant. That remains so when a solicitor engages the consultant. The court said the rule applies to represented and self-represented litigants alike.
A narrow exception can apply where a suitably qualified litigant provides expert evidence, or specialist work that supports evidence on an issue requiring proof. The court found that no evidence had been presented showing that the invoices covered this kind of expert service. It also said the adjudicator could decide first whether the claimed items were legally recoverable, without conducting a detailed assessment of each invoice where the items were not recoverable in principle.
The judgment concerned the costs determination only. It did not revisit the underlying challenge to the recapitalisation, which the judgment says had failed in the High Court and on appeal.