The claimants in National Bank of Kazakhstan & Another v The Bank of New York Mellon & Ors [2020] EWHC 916 (Comm) successfully applied for a DCC for $3.7m. The solicitors for four of the defendants quickly made an application to set aside the DCC but took 13 days to appoint a firm of costs lawyers and a further 16 days to provide them with the file and dataset in the required format. At the hearing, they asked the court for more time to draft points of dispute.
Master Rowley, handing down judgment in the Senior Court Costs Office in March, found the solicitors had provided no good reason for not supplying the draft points of dispute and therefore he had no basis on which to set aside the DCC. He described the excuse given as ‘not an impressive explanation at all’.
He added: ‘I would have expected any litigation firm to have links with external costs lawyers so that instructions could be sent immediately.’
‘In these days of costs budgets and costs and case management hearings, the interplay between costs lawyers and instructing solicitors goes far beyond the traditional instruction of a cost draftsman to prepare a bill (or points of dispute) at the end of a case when the substantive proceedings have concluded.’
Claire Green, chair of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the case ‘serves as a salutary warning to solicitors that they cannot just ignore costs’.
Stewarts partner Fiona Gillett, who acted for the claimants National Bank of Kazakhstan, working with the firm’s senior costs draftsman Joseph Dowley, said: ‘However experienced a litigator you are, input from in-house costs specialists is invaluable to a full-service client offering.’
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