Costs: Father incurred unnecessary expenditure
The Family Court has ordered a law firm to pay 35% of a father’s costs for its “improper, unreasonable and negligent acts”, with their client ordered to pay the rest.
Recorder Patel said the approach taken by London firm Goldfield Solicitors, which acted for the mother, had caused the father to incur unnecessary costs.
The decision followed the mother’s application to vary a child arrangements order, which the judge in his substantive ruling had decided was without merit and really aimed at reducing the amount of time their 15-year-old son spent with the father.
The judge held that some of the mother’s failure to comply with court directions was due to her solicitors. The father asked that either or both pay his costs of just under £36,500 plus VAT.
Recorder Patel, sitting at Milton Keynes Family Court, said the mother had filed six statements totalling 33 pages for the hearing rather than the one statement of eight pages directed.
The solicitor, Seth Mensah, said he had misunderstood the directions, an explanation the judge did not accept.
Goldfield then failed to meet the deadline for submissions on costs but this was extended after Mr Mensah sent the judge an email “explaining his difficult personal circumstances” at the time.
The judge directed “a chronology be provided as to why there was a delay and why no other member of the firm took up responsibility”.
Mr Mensah filed the firm’s response without a chronology. In a subsequent email, the solicitor “set out his personal difficulties and then provides that the firm’s family department was understaffed because the other three fee-earners were also experiencing personal difficulties” that meant they were out of the office.
Recorder Patel said: “I am satisfied that there has been improper, unreasonable and negligent acts on behalf of Goldfield Solicitors.
“I have no doubt that there was no misunderstanding about the direction regarding statements… The court’s directions were not complied with on multiple occasions.”
The recorder went on: “Mr Mensah’s approach to relatively routine enquiries from the father’s solicitors was obstructive. At times he failed to respond at all and others he failed to act when necessary. That conduct continued following the court issuing directions regarding costs.
“Mr Mensah suffered terrible personal circumstances and there can be no doubt the impact upon anyone would be significant. However, I note that he returned to work on 4 November 2024, yet still failed to comply with the court’s directions.”
However, Recorder Patel said he did not consider that Goldfields was responsible for the mother making or pursuing the application.
“In order to do so I would have to consider their assistance to an abuse of process of the court. While there are a number of failings, the solicitors’ conduct cannot be said to have been dishonest, misleading or to have risked the interests of justice.
“Furthermore, the instructions provided by the mother may have had some basis to cause the solicitors to consider there was merit in the application.”
But the judge found that Mr Mensah and Goldfield Solicitors’ conduct had caused the father’s solicitors to incur unnecessary costs, as further shown by the fact that the father’s solicitors ended up preparing the bundle when it was Goldfields’ responsibility.
This “further underlines the negligence of conduct of Goldfields”, he said.
The mother’s behaviour had been “unreasonable and in some respects reprehensible” in pursuing the application. She was ordered pay 65% of the father’s costs, and Goldfield 35%.
Leave a Comment