Bill of costs: One of the most serious cases of miscertification imaginable
A judge has condemned a solicitor for “the worst example of tampering with a file of papers that I have ever encountered” in reducing a bill claimed at nearly £260,000 to zero.
Cost Judge James said she would report Sukhraj Multani to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for misconduct, while HM Revenue & Customs may become involved because the solicitor appeared to have claimed VAT when she was not registered for it.
She said the complete file has been retained at the Senior Courts Costs Office as evidence should the regulator want it.
In Kapoor v Johal, Ms Multani, a sole practitioner at West London law firm RH Solicitors, was found to have sought to recover sums far in excess of what the client had been invoiced – both for her firm and the two firms that had previously acted for the client – and created attendance notes to justify them.
The underlying litigation concerned a long-drawn-out boundary dispute that lasted from 2010 to 2022, when the final proceedings brought against Ms Multani’s client (called the ‘RP’, or receiving party, in the ruling) were dismissed.
While the client had been invoiced around £84,000, the 65-page bill was for £258,583 in breach of the indemnity principle, which was “a serious disciplinary matter”. Judge James estimated that she would have allowed £40-45,000 on a standard basis assessment had she conducted one.
In going through the bill, she highlighted dozens of discrepancies that she ruled were more than just mistakes.
“The six-figure increase from the invoices to the bill has come from claiming VAT on Ms Multani’s costs when none was charged to RP (which suggests that Ms Multani was not VAT registered at the relevant time) as well as from claiming hourly rates higher than those charged to RP and from the create of scores if not hundreds of much later attendance notes, and manuscript amendments to contemporaneous notes, seeking to claim times much higher than were ever spent.
“That finding is based upon the invoices and N260s (which are contemporaneous unlike the bill, and which claim much lower times) and upon the contents of the files.
“Claims for massive amounts of time spent on instructions to counsel which are almost verbatim the same as the last set of instructions, or hours and hours spent on a bundle of only a hundred pages or so, or timed attendances originally claimed at a few units, being increased to a few hours, and of course fixed fees for a clerk to set behind counsel, being claimed at grade A fee-earner rates including travel to and from court and time discussing the case with RP at court when (according to the file) neither Ms Multani nor RP were at court, are some examples.”
Judge James said the Court of Appeal’s ruling on misconduct in costs, Gempride v Bamrah (which was also a case she originally heard), made clear that the solicitor could not shift responsibility for signing the certificate on the bill to the costs draftsman she had used, nor could RP in respect of the parts of the bill relating to the other solicitors.
“The misconduct in doing so is their own, and the court’s power to reduce the bill accordingly under CPR part 44.11, could not be more clearly indicated.
“This is the worst example of tampering with a file of papers that I have ever encountered and the fact that the files of Ms Multani’s two predecessor firms have also had the same treatment, is even more extraordinary.”
The costs draftsman was listed as Mr S Kumar of Nathan Associates. The judge said that if he were a Costs Lawyer, she would report him to the Association of Costs Lawyers, “but as he is not practising in the regulated sector, I simply note that I consider his conduct also warrants investigation”.
She added that counsel was not aware of what she would find on Ms Multani’s files “and I make no criticism of him”.
Costs lawyer Simon Gibbs of GWS Law acted for the paying party, and Judge James said he was not guilty of hyperbole in saying this was “one of the most serious cases of miscertification of a bill imaginable”.
She also awarded the paying party its costs of the detailed assessment on the indemnity basis as drawn, a total of £10,314.
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