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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 >> Samuels Corporate v Somers [2002] EWCA Civ 201 (11 February 2002) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/201.html Cite as: [2002] EWCA Civ 201

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE KINGSTON UPON THAMES COUNTY COURT
(Mr Recorder Hamlin)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday, 11th February 2002

Monday, 11th February 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY: Mr Somers, who has appeared before me in person today and has explained his case with great clarity, was sued by Samuels Corporate for unpaid fees for professional services and advice that had been provided. There was no pre-agreed fee or scale of fees; the question was whether what Mr Somers was billed for was reasonable. He took the view (which he was perfectly entitled to take) that he was being quite seriously overcharged.
2. The matter came before District Judge Dimmick in August 2001 at Kingston-upon-Thames County Court, and the District Judge awarded the claimant most of what it was seeking. The claimant had, however, offered to discount the bill as a gesture of goodwill in an amount not far from the extent to which the District Judge found Mr Somers had succeeded in criticising the bill. He accordingly gave judgment for the balance of £2,200.
3. Mr Somers applied for permission to appeal. The application came before Mr Recorder Hamlin on 21st September 2001. The transcript of the proceedings before the District Judge had not arrived by this time even though Mr Somers had bespoken it. A not of the decision, however, approved by the District Judge was, as I understand it, available. In a carefully reasoned judgment the Recorder refused permission to appeal except on a single ground, namely a mathematical error of calculation on which, permission having been given, the claimant consented to the appeal being allowed on the spot. For the rest, therefore, permission to appeal was refused. It is against this refusal of permission that Mr Somers now seeks permission to appeal.
4. He has set out in detail his objections to the District Judge's manner of proceeding and to his reasoning and conclusions. But there is an immovable object in his path. Section 54(4) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 says in its material part:

"No appeal may be made against a decision of a court under this section to give or refuse permission."

5. The refusal of permission in this case was refusal of permission to appeal to the county court, and so it comes within subsection (1) and, therefore, subsection (4) of section 54. I have shown this to Mr Somers today, and he no more than I can see a way round it. This court simply has no jurisdiction to entertain the appeal which he seeks to bring, and I am bound on that ground to refuse permission to appeal.
6. I have, nevertheless, listened with care to Mr Somers' principal grounds of criticism, which he is now able to amplify (as he was not before the Recorder) from the full transcript. He submits that he should not be penalised for not having had the transcript before the Recorder when he had done nothing wrong, and when it was the court's own slow procedures compared with the rapidity with which it came before the Recorder which deprived him of it. He also complains that before the District Judge he was put under unfair pressure of time.
7. I have looked both before today and again today at the transcript, and I have to say that I do not think that either of those arguments was likely to have succeeded in any event. The transcript itself shows how the District Judge approached the matter. It shows that, like any judge, he was keeping an eye on the passage of time and the productive use of time. It certainly shows, as Mr Somers says, that the District Judge was taking a fairly broad approach to the quantification of the bill. In a situation in which there is no pre-agreed figure, no pre-agreed tariff, and no legally set scale of fees, he can do very little else, and it seems to me that, subject to the one mathematical error that the Recorder corrected by consent, the approach taken by the District Judge, unfortunate though it was for Mr Somers, was overwhelmingly likely to be upheld even had the transcript been available.
8. I say this in order to try to compensate Mr Somers for the want of any further appeal because I do not actually think that he has been cheated, as he feels he has, of a better and more favourable outcome. I think he may have expected more from the judicial process than the judicial process is capable of delivering in terms of precision of calculation and razor-like intervention in matters of this kind. What the District Judge did, therefore, might well have turned out to be no more than could be asked of him. That, however, is not the reason for refusing permission today. The reason is that I have no power to allow an appeal to proceed and for that reason the application must be refused.
Order: Application refused.