A costs order for £30,000 has been secured against a defunct firm after the purported client was found to have no knowledge of the proceedings.
According to a statement by defendant firm HF (formerly Horwich Farrelly), lawyers successfully argued that Asons Solicitors, its medical report agency TMT Medicals and the former TMT Medicals director Haroon Karim should pay the costs associated with the failed claim.
The claim was brought by Asons following a road traffic accident in October 2014. But the claimant did not engage with the litigation and as a result, HF secured a costs order against him of around £8,000. When chased for payment, he pointed out that he not only had no knowledge of the claim, but had not even been involved in an accident.
According to HF, once the ‘claimant’ was able to establish that he was not involved, the firm and its insurer client First Central pursued Asons, TMT Medicals and Karim for wasted costs, which came to £30,000. In a judgment as yet unpublished, His Honour Judge Luba KC described the issues in the case as ‘truly extraordinary’ and pointed out this was not an isolated occurrence.
Alex Wilkinson, partner at HF, said the details of the case ‘cast a stain’ over the whole of the personal injury industry. ‘Insurers and the public must have trust in those representing claimants. Asons solicitors have been shown time and again to have singularly failed in establishing that trust. Haroon Karim, too, is someone who I have tackled before in respect of his dishonest conduct.’
Karim was jailed for six months in 2019 for contempt over the forging of court documents. The proceedings arose from a previous case brought by Horwich Farrelly in conjunction with insurer LV=, in which the judge at Nottingham County Court ruled that an Asons solicitor made ‘gross failures’ in handling a PI claim where documents were found to contain forged signatures. Asons ceased trading in 2017.
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