civil fees – Legal Babble

HMCTS has a number of ways of obtaining money from court users. Some of these amount to sharp practice and although within the Civil Procedure Rules can also be said to amount to an abuse of process.

Yesterday I discussed how difficult it is to obtain a refund from HMCTS (with an example!). Today I look at one of the ways they increase costs for parties.

Here’s one of the ways this happens.

An application in a civil claim was cancelled with a few days notice.

This is because the High Court Judge set to hear the case, The Hon. Mr Nicholas Lavender, decided to scuttle back to London before Yorkshire and the North East Circuit (for which he is senior civil judge) was put into tier three COVID restrictions. In the event this was pointless as a few days later the Government decided to lockdown the whole of England. However this caused significant disruption to civil listings at Leeds Combined Court this week. Great to see a judge who takes his leadership responsibilities so seriously.

The hearing was rescheduled with eight days notice to the parties. Which was insufficient notice for the Claimant. The Claimant informed the court of this and the grounds for being unable to attend the short-notice rescheduled hearing. Either these grounds were not out before the judge or else were ignored.

One facet of The Hon. Nicholas Lavender’s handling of cases can be seen on a website in which it’s complained that he seeks to drive up costs for litigants. Particularly ones whose cases he finds tiresome. I suppose he has to find some amusement in the job. This site can be found at https://www.bentjudgenicholaslavender.site/index.php/contact/ [viewed February 2020]. Some of the content of the site this writer is unable to verify: in respect of his seeking to drive up costs for parties however I am able to comment.

So consequently the grounds on which the Claimant couldn’t make the rescheduled hearing were ignored and an Order made by the judge regarding the rescheduled date. As per usual the route to challenge such an Order lies in the completion of an N244 form and the payment of a fee. Indeed this is the only route to do so when an Order has been made by the judge.

Now here’s where things get funky. In addition to driving up costs for parties he dislikes Nicholas Lavender likes to take his time on dealing with applications made. Sometimes this can be up to four months when HMCTS service standards say fourteen days should be the turnaround time for such.

So the court ignored the grounds for the Claimant not being able to attend the rescheduled date in order to make an application which would then cost the Claimant £55 to overturn. There is of course no guarantee that the application to vacate the rescheduled date would be heard before the due date of the hearing (especially not with this judge!) but hey… let’s take a punt on the idea of making some more money out of a service user.

This sort of thing represents clear sharp practice but is a common enough activity within HMCTS.

Two blog entries on two separate days about how HMCTS deals with services users money.

Tomorrow is the more complex blog entry which deals with some of the underhand ways civil courts like to part you from your cash. Stay tuned!

Today is a simpler tale of how awkward they are when you try to get it back.

An artists impression of the inside of the Fees Office at The Royal Courts of Justice.

In April this year a fee was paid to Queen’s Bench Division at The Royal Courts of Justice.

Due to the pandemic QBD was largely out of action for some time, or at least the office to deal with the application was.

By July it was clear that the grounds and reasons for making the application had passed. The time which had gone without any staff present to man the appropriate office at QBD rendered the application pointless.

So the fees were requested to be returned.

“No problem!”, say QBD.

And the appropriate notification was supposed to have been sent to Fees Office. Lead time on return was reckoned to be six weeks maximum.

Four months later I’m still waiting.

Not that the fee paid was large or exorbitant. Which makes the continued retention of it even more baffling.

But what really boils my blood is that of several emails sent to both QBD and Fees Office at RCJ can you guess how many have received a response?

Go on! Have a wild guess!

That’s right. None. Over a period of some four months now Fees Office & QBD has failed totally to respond to several emails chasing this matter.

This is of course very HMCTS.

Nor have emails to The Court Manager at QBD about the lack of response received a reply. This is even more HMCTS!

Just today an email response to a separate matter has been issued by HMCTS. That took a blindingly quick two months without any explanation of why so much time had elapsed.

In separate proceedings last week the DJ complained that the case file was in very poor condition. A prior hearing in the same matter had to be abandoned on the basis that the file had been lost.

All of the above and the general woeful experiences to be had with HMCTS suggest the organisation – visibly tottering for some time – is now actually on the verge of collapsing or has actually done so. Staff largely unable to cope pre-COVID-19 appear now to be hopelessly overwhelmed by the day to day administration of cases.

Tag: civil fees

Sharp Practice Filling the Coffers at HMCTS

HMCTS’ Golden Rule: “Once you have their money you never give it back”.