A High Court judge has been critical of a firm which claimed more than £1,000 an hour for its top lawyers. 

In GS Woodland Court GP 1 Limited & Anor v RGCM Limited & Ors Mr Justice Constable said it was not for him to suggest what rates should be substituted in but he noted that the £1,089 claimed by international firm Jones Day for Grade A fee earners was ‘substantially in excess’ of the guideline hourly rates of £566.

The judge added that it was ‘no justification’ for the claimants to justify their rates on the basis that the defendants had also gone over the guideline hourly rates. ‘If the claimants wanted to take a point about the defendants’ rates they could have done so; instead they have agreed them,’ said Constable. ‘That does not mean that I am bound to take the same view in relation to the claimants’ claimed rates.’

The judge said the nature of the case, a claim relating to numerous alleged defects at a block of student accommodation and involving six defendants, justified a Grade A fee earner based in central London. But Constable brushed aside arguments that high fees were the result of doing heavy commercial work, saying the instruction of the Grade A fee earners was already recognition of this.

The claimants’ lawyers had urged the court not to rely on comparisons between the parties’ costs, saying the burden was greater on them to prove each of the allegations.

But the judge said claimant costs should not be significantly higher and certainly not in this case at the same level as the defendants’ costs put together.

He added: ‘Each of the defendants have to, for example, instruct their own experts, go through their own disclosure exercises, and there will some be necessary duplication, if it can be put that way, of costs between each defendant facing the same allegations. That is not so for the claimants, who will have a single team and will therefore have a more efficient mode of working.’

At the outset of a half-day costs management hearing, the claimants had sought costs of £8.74m, having received offers from the defendants of between £2.7m and £3.4m. The sum recovered was set at £4.2m by the judge, who added that the claimants’ position was ‘clearly on the wrong side of the line’ despite it beating the defendants’ offer.

He ordered that the defendants could recover their reasonable costs of the costs management hearing, while the claimants should bear their own costs.

This was on the basis that hourly fees claimed were ‘implausible’ and that it was ‘pretty obvious’ what the court’s approach would have been to the rates claimed.