ATE/CFA

A law firm which closed down its personal injury department and passed on its client to another practice could not claim its fees at the end of her case because she had entered a new CFA.

A district judge failed to consider the risks that a claimant solicitor should have taken into account when entering into a CFA and so was wrong to award a 65% success fee, the High Court has ruled.

Solicitors will in future have to provide a bill or breakdown of costs when seeking payment of success fees and ATE premiums out of the damages of children or protected parties.

Boxing promoter Frank Warren has been refused permission to appeal a costs judge’s ruling that the assignment of two CFAs – under which he owed his solicitors nearly £1m – was valid.

The government is to abolish the recoverability of success fees in defamation cases – but retain it for after-the-event insurance premiums, it announced yesterday.

The High Court yesterday dismissed the group litigation brought on behalf of more than 40,000 Kenyan claimants, after six years of work done by lawyers operating on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis.

The High Court has struck out a law firm’s amended particulars of claim for an indemnity from a QC if the firm was successfully sued by claimants who took part in failed group litigation. Failure to produce new particulars would inevitably lead to the part 20 claim failing.

Lawyers and litigation funders would “by a considerable margin” be the main beneficiaries of any award in a representative action against Google over misuse of private data, the High Court has ruled in blocking the case going forward.