Elvanite provides an important lesson in costs budgeting, says Mark James
Costs budgeting has been with us for nearly six months now. Most practitioners still have little experience of filling in a Form H. What they all have is a fear that they might get it wrong and that, as a consequence, their winning client may not be able to recover reasonable and proportionate costs from the losing party; and, that their firm may be asked by the aggrieved client to make up the shortfall by writing off part or all of its fees. At the heart of this fear is uncertainty as to how much leeway the court will give a solicitor who has made a mistake in his budget. The mixed messages from the courts have not helped. Under the pre-April 2013 pilot schemes the courts talked tough but, when it came to it, the decisions were sympathetic to the erring party. Thus, in Henry v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 19, [2013] 2 All ER 840, a case under
