Belsner has no winners: the court sees the whole thing as grubby

So Belsner is now with us, and the 23-page judgment is largely devasting for everyone involved.

The case has ultimately become like a war over a tiny patch of land where all the combatants end up strewn on the ground. The only assessment we can really make is whose wounds are fatal and whose can be patched up and mended.

The heaviest blow has been struck to the likes of checkmylegalfees.com (CMLF), which – ironically for a firm which makes its living from recovering costs – could be facing a rather hefty costs bill itself. Four days in the Court of Appeal and enough bewigged lawyers to fill a football team do not come cheap.

It is difficult to see how any checkmylegalfees.com claim can ever again end up in the High Court. Master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos, who during cross-examination appeared no great admirer of this new wave of litigation, made it clear that bringing such ‘trivial’ claims will result in massive costs penalties for clients and their new representatives, even if they manage to shave a bit off their original bill.

Vos suggested that these types of claims were better suited to the legal ombudsman (not an organisation which would necessarily benefit from a lorryload of new work) and it is difficult if not impossible to see what profits CMLF would gain from holding clients’ hands through that process.

The Belsner case was decided on its facts rather than some grand principle of informed consent, but any PI firm hearing from CMLF in future will surely come back with the website of the legal ombudsman and a resounding ‘won’t see you in court’ response.

That’s not to say solicitors have avoided some nasty body blows from Vos and his colleagues. The firm in Belsner, CAM Legal Services, may have won its appeal, but when the judgment suggests you may have broken the solicitors’ code of conduct, it’s probably not worth cracking open the champagne. Indeed, the whole PI industry might want to read the ruling with a somewhat stronger drink, given that the master of the rolls pretty much eviscerates how solicitors engage with clients pursuing claims through the portal.

‘Solicitors seem to be signing up their clients to a costs regime that allows them to charge significantly more than the claim is known in advance to be likely to be worth,’ concludes Vos. Many – including the solicitors in Belsner – will have altered their practices from a few years ago, but those who have not may well be forced into change if this ruling resonates with civil procedure rule-makers.

What comes across is that the Court of Appeal top brass regard much of the personal injury claims business – the initial deductions and the bringing of claims to claw them back – as one grubby process, in need of either significant reform or shutting down altogether. In such circumstances, declaring anyone a winner from this bloody battle is a stretch.

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