Do "budget" law firms DELIBERATELY lose at CCMCC in order to appeal at a highter court?

skargilarian

Maybe I'm cynical, and maybe I am in error of fact or of law, but I recently saw in the press a case where a private individual won a case at the CCMCC but then lost when the PPC appealed. The advantage to them in doing this, as I understand it, is that they cannot claim legal expenses if winning at CCMCC, but they CAN do so at a higher court. So they pay peanuts for a poor claim then bring in the big guns to sting the private individual at appeal. I believe the person concerned had to resort to crowdfunding to pay the expenses of the ultimately victorious PPC. I am presentlly in litigation with a PPC and they seem to be about to take this tack...Any thoughts?

patient_dream

If you could link the case you mention, it would be helpful

Castle

It's probably Norma's car park and OPS.

Umkomaas

My understanding is (and I hope @Johnersh or @bargepole might comment) that where a case commences in the county court, then appeal costs remain governed by small claims court rules, unless unreasonable behaviour comes into play?

Sandtree

You also have to remember that you cannot just appeal because you dont like the outcome, you must be able to show a serious error in law or due process wasnt followed. Their client would have to be exceptionally trusting that they can throw the original case in the hope of arguing for the right to appeal especially with the fee to file an appeal even if the court decides not to grant you an appeal.

Must admit to having no idea if legal fees are allowable in an appeal of a small track case, even the one case I looked at recently which was an appeal for the defendants costs from a small track case the posts on line state they won costs for their original defence to an error by the judge on the CPRs but is mute on what was awarded for the appeal itself. 

bargepole

Umkomaas said:

My understanding is (and I hope @Johnersh or @bargepole might comment) that where a case commences in the county court, then appeal costs remain governed by small claims court rules, unless unreasonable behaviour comes into play?

It is quite correct that when a case is allocated to the Small Claims track at first hearing, it remains on that track at any subsequent appeal, however high up in the system it goes.

This means that the limited costs rules (CPR 27.14) apply at every stage, and the only way any further legal costs can be recovered is if it can be shown that the losing party has behaved unreasonably. In the Beavis case, Parking Eye's costs would have been into six figures by the time it reached the Supreme Court, but none of that was recoverable against the Defendant.

To deliberately lose at the first hearing would be a risky strategy, because you would have to engineer it so that the Judge made a manifest error in law, or a finding of fact that no reasonable Judge would have on the evidence before him. Also, at an appeal hearing, the appeal Judge will only consider the evidence that was before the lower court, no new evidence can be introduced.

95Rollers

I wouldn't have thought so based on the high volume of losses amongst the various PPCs and their legals. They are already losing money. I think it is a case of they blanket request to appeal everything and if it's granted they'll throw everything they've got into such as Norma's case - which from what I understand wasn't so much the judgment, but more so their beef with the Judge and what he said. They've had multiple similar judgments against them for crap signs, abuse of process, unfair terms etc but those have all been upheld.  I think it's just pot luck if they can find something.

Coupon-mad

Haha!  If you are talking about Norma's case, no, they didn't deliberately lose. I was the lay rep.

They fought hard and lost on all counts but unfortunately the first Judge went too far and then you have the gamble of Circuit Judges who have not the foggiest idea about parking cases and get led by the best barrister.  That's what happened.  The Circuit Judge was convinced the other way on all counts.  

The law is what you bring to the courtroom and in the appeal, nothing useful was said by Norma's barrister.  That's history now and yes, crowdfunding almost covered it.