Page 11 - PIC e-newsletter Spring Issue 8

CIVIL COSTS
ARTICLE
Que sera sera –
Whatever AB will be
There have been a number of changes to the proposed format and workings of the new electronic bill since the first circulation of precedent AA. Further development led to precedent AB, removing the need for full J-Code use and which quieted at least some of the misgivings of the profession. With the now canonical Precedent S, we have finality (for the time being at least). Dominic Woodhouse reports.
What will it mean for assessments?
A few years ago, dealing with budgeting at a CCMC,
it took me five minutes to demonstrate to the Court and my opponent that figures in my client’s budget had not been duplicated and didn’t reflect an error in preparation of the budget; it just so happened that the total of incurred disbursements in a particular phase exactly matched the amount of counsel’s future fees within that phase. Five minutes can be a long time.
As I resorted to drawing rings and arrows on my paper copy of the budget while leaning across the desk so that the judge and opponent could see my ‘workings’, I questioned my ability to explain simple concepts. The experience doesn’t fill me with
confidence when contemplating how dealing with the new bill in its electronic format at Court may pan out.
No disrespect is intended to the judiciary in suggesting that there
may be some difficulties in achieving the aim of electronic bills being manipulated by a judge during assessment, calculating allowances as they go along, with minimal confusion for all in the room; when the tape has been turned off, a number of judges have aired their thoughts to me on their Excel abilities and the general lack of
IT support and training within the court
service. Even with mastery of the workings
of the bill as presented, it is likely that parties will
find the need to create ad hoc pivot tables or use similar analysis tools to demonstrate particular points, stretching the abilities of the Court to keep up.
Whilst Jackson LJ criticised the ‘Victorian account book’ style of the traditional format bill as making it ‘relatively easy for a receiving party to disguise or even hide what has gone on’ (a criticism which experience suggests rests on very shaky foundations), the new
bill seems almost purpose-made for the concept. Chevalier Dupin in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ would have known to look in the endless rows
Those dealing with assessment of costs at
Court will need to be masters of Excel or similar spreadsheet software, and able to manipulate the data like a first language...
of data in the ‘Bill Detail’ page for such concealed matters but with no guarantee he would have found them.
This raises a fundamental point; whether judges will still conduct assessments in the same level of detail as hitherto they may have done. It seems likely that the Court will be decidedly reluctant
to wade through the detail of the new bill, rather that most of
the assessment will turn around analysis of the various summary pages, potentially with additional summaries deployed by parties to counter or enhance the impression created by the standard breakdowns within Precedent S.
www.pic.legal Spring 2018
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