Costs draftsman’s success fee

Crane v Canons Leisure Centre [2007] EWCA Civ 1352 19 December 2007; TLR 10 January

The underlying dispute was compromised and costs only proceedings were commenced. The collective conditional fee agreement (CCFA) had distinguished between charges for work done by or on behalf of the solicitors, and expenses that the solicitors had incurred on the client’s behalf. It was a distinction between the charges by the solicitors themselves, for work they themselves did or were directly responsible for, and expenses that they incurred for the client, some of which were for other people’s work for which the solicitor was not directly responsible and which they simply passed onto the client at cost. On the detailed assessment, the solicitors instructed a firm of costs consultants which the costs judge held were to be treated as a disbursement, and therefore did not attract a success fee.