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	England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> BD Laddie (A Firm) v Becker [2001] EWCA Civ 1290 (23 July 2001) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2001/1290.html Cite as: [2001] EWCA Civ 1290

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
(Mr Justice Lloyd)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday, 23rd July 2001

1. LADY JUSTICE HALE: This is an application for permission to appeal against the order of Lloyd J made in the Chancery Division on 2nd March 2001. That order continued an interlocutory injunction restraining the defendant from disposing of any part of the sum of £87,000 paid to it by Messrs Barlow Lyde & Gilbert in November 2000, save for the purposes of discharging the costs of the solicitors that acted in the litigation, Becker v Baileys Shaw & Gillett.
2. The applicant before me is Mr. Becker. He was the claimant in the original litigation, but he was not on 2nd March 2001 a party to the action in which the injunction was claimed. On 6th March 2001 he was added as the second defendant by a without notice order of Deputy Master Lipton.
3. This matter has a long and complicated history. I can only sketch the most important points. The applicant brought proceedings against a firm of solicitors, Baileys Shaw & Gillett, who had previously acted for him. They were represented by Barlow Lyde & Gilbert. The applicant had, from a comparatively early stage in those proceedings, the benefit of a legal aid certificate with a nil contribution. It would be helpful to have a full chronology of the legal representation and the legal aid circumstances in this case, but I gather from Mr. Becker that he was granted legal aid in January 1994, having begun the proceedings in July 1993 and appointed his first firm of solicitors in August 1993. No less than five firms of solicitors acted for him in that litigation, Jay Benning & Levine, Cooke Carmael, Lewis Nedas, Freemans and finally BD Laddie & Co, who are the claimants in the current proceedings. He succeeded in establishing liability. The quantum of his damages was to be established later. £40,000 was paid into court, and eventually the applicant decided to accept it. I have no doubt that that decision was made reluctantly, as in his view he had a good case for a much higher sum. However, it appears that it was accepted in June 2000.
4. Those events led to him and BD Laddie & Co parting company. Mr. Becker tells me that Laddie announced their intention of resigning from the case in May 2000 and that this is confirmed by the contents of a letter from Laddie to Barlow Lyde & Gilbert of 16th May. In June Laddie & Co wrote to the Legal Services Commission informing them that the matter had now been settled. This appears to have led to the discharge of the legal aid certificate, even though at that stage the matter of costs had not been agreed (that is, how much the costs should be). They appear to have finally parted company on 21st July 2000, as far as the contents of a letter written by Mr. Becker would indicate. The appellant believes that the disagreement was over his insistence that he should have the final say in the settlement of the matter of fees. Laddie & Co, on the other hand, say that it was because they refused to let him have the damages in court until the costs had been paid because of the Legal Services Commission statutory charge.
5. Thereafter, Mr. Becker negotiated directly with Barlow Lyde & Gilbert for the purpose of agreeing what the costs should be. He instructed the first defendants, Carritt & Co, to assist him in this. There were then acrimonious exchanges between BD Laddie & Co and Carritt & Co as to their respective involvement in negotiating that settlement. However, on 30th November 2000 Carritt & Co accepted £87,000 from Barlow Lyde & Gilbert in full and final settlement of the applicant's costs in the action. According to their letter of 2nd December, they had made it clear to Barlow Lyde & Gilbert that any balance remaining after the settlement of the several firms of solicitors' costs would go to Mr. Becker. It appears that the Legal Services Commission were reimbursed what they had paid out to these various firms on account. The question remains what more those firms may be owed.
6. Carritt & Co also obtained payment out of court of the balance of the damages remaining there. This was £27,000. £13,000 had previously been paid out to BD Laddie & Co. They had allowed the applicant to have £10,000 of this because of his desperate circumstances. They retained £3,000 which they still retain. The £27,000 was paid out to the applicant. Laddie & Co objected strongly to Carritt & Co negotiating the settlement and obtaining the payment of damages out of court. They wrote some strong letters, both to the Legal Services Commission and to Carritt & Co.
7. These proceedings were begun by BD Laddie & Co against Carritt & Co on 28th February, claiming delivery up of "money held by the defendant which belongs to the claimant." The figure claimed in the proceedings is approaching £39,000. The defence filed by Carritt & Co on 3rd April states that this is all quite proper because BD Laddie had procured the cancellation of the legal aid certificate. Carritt & Co had reimbursed the Legal Services Commission and settled or agreed settlement with all the other firms of solicitors. They deny therefore refusing to pay Laddie & Co what they are entitled to.
8. The whole matter is deeply unfortunate. If BD Laddie & Co and the applicant had not parted company the applicant would have had little to do with the negotiation of costs and no interest in it other than ensuring that enough was obtained to discharge the Legal Services Commission charge so that he could have all his damages intact. If there are stages in the litigation when he was acting as a litigant in person, he would also have an interest in obtaining his own costs for those periods. But there is some evidence in the bundle that Laddie & Co seem to think that they might have got more than that and that is what the applicant objects to. He thinks that they are trying to make an unjustified profit out of the litigation. As I understand it, he objects to solicitors, who persuaded him to accept less than he thinks he was entitled to in the litigation, going on to claim more than legal aid rates for working for him. If more money was available from the defendants, no doubt he would say that it should have gone into his settlement rather than their costs. He has a number of complaints against each of the firms of solicitors who acted for him and he therefore wants to be involved in the assessment of their costs. He says that this is a mandatory requirement under the Legal Aid Act in any event. He also says that he is entitled to be involved because he was the client. What he wanted Lloyd J to do was to add him as a party to the action and direct that money should not be paid out without a proper assessment. He wanted the injunction varied so as to read "provided such costs have been (a) agreed with [him] or (b) assessed by a court or tribunal of competent jurisdiction." The result of the proceedings against Carritt & Co is that they can no longer act for him. They are under pressure to agree to pay out and so is he.
9. The difficulty that I have had with this application is two-fold. The first is in trying to establish that Mr. Becker has any legitimate interest in the disposition of this fund. He has satisfied me that he has such an interest, even if it is only a limited one. It is he who negotiated this settlement of the costs and the costs were therefore paid, albeit to his solicitors, for him. He therefore has an interest in ensuring that such costs as are paid out to those solicitors who acted for him are reasonable and proper in the circumstances. He has also pointed out that there were periods when he was acting as a litigant in person in respect of which he may have some claim in his own account.
10. My other worry is that, given that Mr. Becker's interest in the fund was of such a limited nature, for him to pursue this matter further in this separate action might put him at risk of costs in that separate action which would deprive him of much of the benefit, inadequate though he believes it to be, of the proceedings which he has been pursuing at such trouble, to put it mildly, for so many years. Mr. Becker understands that point and nevertheless believes that it is appropriate that he should continue to press for what he sees as the just and proper result of these proceedings, which include those solicitors who have acted for him not being over-remunerated for the work that they have done.
11. It would be difficult for the Court of Appeal in those circumstances to say that the exercise of discretion by Lloyd J on 2nd March 2001 was so plainly wrong that the court could interfere with it. This court is reluctant to interfere with what the judge below has done in a matter of discretion. On the other hand, Mr. Becker is now a party to this action. He does have some interest in the disposition of these funds. He merely wishes the injunction to be varied to a limited extent to protect that interest. In my view, the quickest and simplest way for him to seek to achieve that result, should he, on mature reflection, still wish to do so, would be by making an application for the variation of the terms of that injunction and making it in the court below. Were that application to fail, he would be at risk of having to pay the other side's costs, and he understands that. But I would emphasise that the exercise of Lloyd J's discretion on 2nd March being, as it was, in circumstances of some constraint upon his time, and the difficulties that Mr. Becker was labouring under as a non-party to the proceedings, should not be regarded as in any way fettering the discretion of the judge who comes to consider any subsequent application by Mr. Becker.
12. It is for those reasons that I refuse the application for permission to appeal. I direct that a copy of this judgment be supplied to Mr Becker at public expense. It may or may not be of limited assistance to him if he chooses to take up this alternative possibility.
Order: Application refused; copy of transcript to be supplied to Mr Becker at public expense.