District Judge R James on "Set Aside" - CPR 3.1(7)
And the Horse Finally Learned to Sing - just a bit
Firstly, my apologies for the delay in publishing the promised parts of the Judgement of D J R James (the Regional Costs Judge) - i.e. the parts that deal with the Law and CPR 3.1(7). Please bear with me. There are good reasons for this - see below. If your need is urgent then please contact me.
As soon as it becomes available (10/07/2008)
and (For the search engines)
(Format poor / unproofed straight OCR copy)
My Skeleton Arguments (that won the day on CPR 3.1(7))
Reasons: As intimated on the previous page - Council appointed by FDC Law (David Curwen) is a slippery character. It appears that their previous council (Catriona Duthie) deserted them after Patricia Wayman had misled His Honour Judge Barclay back in September 2004 (here)... and Curwen was then appointed.
Curwen's first "action" was what I now dub "The Curwen Ruse" - this email should be self explanatory. I wished to avoid a repeat.
I have today received a letter in connection with the email - D J R James commented as follows:
"I have just seen Mr. Poultney's email to the court dated 29th May 2008 purportedly [SIC] giving notice of his intention to publish parts of my draft judgement on his website. I wish to make it clear that until my judgement is handed down in open court it remains a draft and is confidentil to the parties and the court. I trust that Mr Poultney will respect this"
District Judge James - 2nd June 2008
Ok... I have no objections to reasonable requests, though it is very hard to see how the judge can in any way revise the parts I was intending to publish. I can wait, for the most part...
I make one exception, however, and that is in respect of the "impression" the Judge formed of Nigel Long (ALCD) on 7th March 2008. The judges impression coincides exactly with my views on Mr. Long, who's earlier deceit has cost me a massive amount of effort to date - and *may* STILL cost me £1,000's. I have quoted D J James's impression of Mr. Long word for word. This has led to the ALCD agreeing - click here - to investigate the complaint. Consider that in more than 6 months (2003/04) the OSS/CCS (Law Society complaints division) did not even "discover" that there was no contentious business agreement between FDC Law and their Client (as required by the 1974 Solicitors Act) OR that Patricia Wayman had completely ignored the Client Care Code (Rule 15) - Material of Persistant breaches of which are deemed Inadequate Professional Service (IPS) a DUTY that is underpinned by Section 42 of the Access to Justice Act 1999. A RESULT with the ALCD I feel :-) Thanks entirely (I feel) to D J James.
News! 3rd June 2008 For those interested in such things it appears that the Legal Services Ombudsman has once AGAIN fined the Law Society for their failings in regulating solicitors - this time £275,000 - see the press release below:-
http://www.olscc.gov.uk/docs/penalty08-09pressnotice.pdf
Is THIS a coincidence? Judge for yourself...
My Application was dated 25th April 2007 and STILL we do not have a judgement. The Bath County Court has been appalling slow - delays due to the wrong order of D J Rutherford, not answering letters and (finally) I couldn't even get the application SERVED until I filed for an Appeal (September 2007). Why?
On 7th March 2008, Patricia Wayman finally admitted in court that she shouldn't have signed the bill produced by Nigel Long (in October 2004). In the circumstances this was "A most serious disciplinary offence" - see below..
FACT: Patricia Wayman was "retired" (ousted? by her partners?) in around March 2007. It's been more than a YEAR now... which I strongly suspect puts her well beyond the reach of the SDT (Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, a division of the High Court that deals with "serious disciplinary offences"). Coincidence?
The relevant case law...
By the 150 year-old Indemnity Principle (see 2.6) Wayman could not ask the Court to award any more costs than were enforceable against her Client.
... any breach of this principle will result in sanction by the Court and reference as to conduct may be made to the Law Society
The relevant case is Bailey v ICB Vehicles Ltd 1998 [3AER 570CA] where Lord Justice Henry determined...
...the signature of a Solicitor, as an Officer of the Court, to a statement/bill of costs is, in normal circumstances, sufficient to enable the Court to be satisfied that the Indemnity Principle has not been breached...
...in so signing the bill the Solicitor certifies the contents of the bill are correct and the signature is not merely an empty formality....
This quotation (and others) are given in more detail here where Henry L J goes on...
...The signature of the bill of costs under the rules is effectively the certificate by an officer of the court that the receiving party's solicitors are not seeking to recover in relation to any item more than they have agreed to charge their client ... For the avoidance of doubt, I also agree that the [costs] officer may and should seek further information where some feature of the case raises suspicions that the whole truth may not been told. And the other side of a presumption of trust afforded to the signature of an officer of the court must be that breach of that trust should be treated as a most serious disciplinary offence."
A most SERIOUS disciplinary offence... Clearly this is VERY MUCH Law Society Business... Too late? Then I suggest the Court MUST deal with it!
Whatever ELSE you do... I suggest you avoid FDC Law like the plague.
ANY bill from this firm should be subjected to the closest scrutiny - check out the Elaine Pitman Page.
New! Nigel Douglas Long, The Boulevard, Weston-Super-Mare - AVOID at ALL costs - click here. Why would ANY competent and honest law firm want to employ such? Come to that, why would any "competent and honest" law firm NEED a witness to deliberately mislead the Court? New!
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Footnote to the footnote: It looks like a couple of the above links are broken already. My guess is that Rick is currently reorganising his Name and Shame website - www.solicitorsfromhell.co.uk - you can, of course go there directly yourself and search... or use this or this or this <--- those are mine... this one ISN'T - so it's not JUST me :-)