Day 157 - 18 Jul 95 - Page 28
1 fact, lawyers in long running cases, lawyers on legal aid,
2 can get interim taxation for the work they are doing and
3 get payments out of public funds in lieu of receiving, at
4 the end of the case, legal aid payments. So if lawyers and
5 legal firms can get payments out of public funds in lieu
6 of -----
7
8 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, I think what you are thinking of is if a
9 solicitor and/or counsel act under a legal aid certificate,
10 they agree to act on the basis that the legal aid fund will
11 meet their reasonable costs and fees and disbursements.
12
13 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It may well be that, at the end of the day,
16 if the party they represent is successful there will be an
17 order that the other side pay the costs. But solicitors
18 and counsel can spend time and energy, confident that they
19 will not go unrewarded, that they will be paid out of the
20 legal aid fund, at least if the costs are not as a result
21 of various orders paid by the other side.
22
23 This is not much comfort if there is a very long case and
24 they have to wait right until the end of it and, in the
25 meantime, are not getting paid anything at all, because
26 lawyers have bills to pay as well as other people. So
27 there are various provisions which enable them to receive a
28 percentage of the costs of their fees as the case goes
29 along, but that is not the situation here at all.
30
31 MR. MORRIS: If, at the end of the case, the Defendants' costs
32 can be ordered to be paid -----
33
34 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Until we get to the end of the case I do not
35 know what the order for costs will be. It is absurd to
36 suppose that it will not pay some attention to the result
37 of the proceedings, i.e. who is successful.
38
39 MR. MORRIS: Yes, but what we are saying here is the discretion
40 exists to pay the costs of litigants in person without
41 limiting that discretion unless the Plaintiffs can show
42 authority limiting that, and that one particular method,
43 I mean, for example, one example of where public funds are
44 available to barristers and get hardship payments, or
45 solicitors involved on legal aid in long running cases, to
46 get payments throughout a trial from public funds in lieu
47 of what happens at the end of the case should also apply to
48 litigants in person. Arguably more so.
49
50 Therefore, that is just an example of how the discretion
51 used for the benefit of solicitors and barristers should
52 also be used for litigants in person in a long running
53 case, or in a case where it is clear that the case may
54 become so unequal that it will be an abuse of process to
55 continue it. That must be an area where any discretion
56 that exists should be exercised, we would submit.
57
58 So, either an order or an indication should be given that
59 the cost of transcripts will be paid for out of public
60 funds under those provisions.
