2020 - 09 - 17 A costs chat with friends - Jeremy Morgan QC, Andy Ellis and Nick Bacon QC

This is the third edition post-Covid of our virtual roundtables under the theme 'Costs talks with friends'. In this edition Jeremy Morgan QC hosts a discussion with Nick Bacon QC of 4 New Square and Andy Ellis. MD of Practico. The ground covered is in part a trailer for some forthcoming appeal decisions of interest to litigators. One concerns the thorny issue of informed consent by clients to situations where their liability for costs to solicitors is likely to exceed the sums available to be recovered inter partes. We also discuss the question of what constitutes litigation services in the context of argument in a recent case involving Ryanair, wherein at first instance it was decided that the solicitors did not have lien on costs that would prevent Ryanair from paying compensation direct to represented claimants. Nick and Andy suggest that reform of the Solicitors Act is long overdue and rounding up recent decisions we look at a little known decision on costs budgeting arising from Depp v NGN which foreshadowed changes in the PD coming in next month.