Login
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Powered by MOMENTUM MEDIA
Two clients of a boutique compensation firm will have their legal bills assessed after a third client had his costs reduced by almost $100,000.
Two Nepalese clients who turned to Bond Legal after a serious vehicle crash have won a court battle to have their legal fees assessed after a third accident victim was successful in having his own bill reduced from just under $130,000 to $31,260 by a costs assessment manager.
After the crash, which killed two other passengers, each of the men were given settlements between $400,000 and $500,000, and each then had about $126,000 to $128,000 deducted by Bond Legal for its fees.
About two years later, in January 2022, the costs assessor found the third accident victim’s costs assessment was void because Bond Legal had not provided him with a revised costs assessment.
In his reasons for assessing the costs at $31,360, the costs assessor said the scope of work in the third client’s case was “quite limited”, the medico-legal opinion was “very narrow”, no counsel was involved, there was no assessment hearing, and there were no court proceedings.
Further, the assessor said a “significant feature” of the case were the number of conferences, which were “far more than one would normally expect in a case like this”. As a result, the accumulated legal costs in the third client’s case were “significant in amount”.
After learning of the third client’s assessment, the two other men made an application for an assessment of their own costs.
These applications were made outside of the review period but the costs assessor granted the extension, particularly given the “genuine concerns and objections about the legal costs that have been charged, and the costs respondents compliance with their disclosure requirements”.
Bond Legal applied to have the applications dismissed for falling outside of the time limit, but Justice Michael Ball of the Supreme Court of NSW said any prejudice suffered by the firm as a result of the “substantial delay” were outweighed by the matters “favouring the extension”.
Justice Ball was satisfied both men had a “limited command of English” and would have unlikely had any sense of what would be reasonable for a solicitor to have charged them for the work provided.
Further, Justice Ball said while there was the delay of approximately six months between learning of the third client’s assessment and making their own applications, there was no evidence either man appreciated there was a time limit on when a review application could be made.
On the evidence before the court, Justice Ball said there was a suggestion the men were “substantially overcharged”.
“The position of each of them was not materially different from [the third client]. They were injured in the same accident.
“As is apparent from the settlement amounts, the nature of the injuries each sustained were of similar seriousness. The same limited issues were likely to arise in each case and the actual fees charged for each client were similar,” Justice Ball concluded.
“The likelihood, then, is that if the applications are dismissed, [the clients] will have been overcharged for the services they were provided without any redress.”
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
Get breaking news
Naomi Neilson
