A solicitor litigant in person has been hit with over £11,000 in indemnity costs after the claimant in a county court case complained he kept changing his legal team.

Abdul Bakhsh and two of his family members are facing a claim for possession from Wild Acres Rest Home Ltd, Reading County Court heard. Bakhsh is seeking to counter-sue the company and had been claiming approximately £2 million, but his allegations of fraud and harassment had been struck out, the court heard.

Wild Acres applied for costs after a hearing on Tuesday at which Bakhsh sought a further 14 days to produce a further amended defence form.

Barrister Marc Brittain, who had agreed to accompany Bakhsh at the hearing but had not yet formally been instructed, said he needed more time to produce a briefer version of the 26-page defence Bakhsh had filed.

The defendant was still paying rent and had always paid rent, so there was no prejudice to claimant in that sense to an extension of time, Brittain added.

But Tim Hammond, for the care home, pointed out the defendant had received the claim in December last year and had since made four different applications for extensions of time. 

District Judge Thomas Talbot-Ponsonby allowed the application by Bakhsh, but ordered that the defendants be disbarred from making any further application to vacate their defence and counter-claim. 

Hammond argued costs should be awarded to Wild Acres for all the work they had done on the case so far, saying Bakhsh’s conduct ’has been pretty disruptive and caused a six-month delay and necessitated a hearing where one would not have been needed’.

The claimant argued Bakhsh had used four different legal teams during the course of the proceedings, including RM Legal and Kinglsey Napley.

Hammond also argued that Bakhsh was not a typical litigant in person, pointing out: ‘He is a solicitor, he is someone with litigation experience. He knows what he is doing.’

Brittain suggested that just because Bakhsh was a solicitor should not necessarily mean he should be treated different to the average litigant in person. ‘Some solicitors, with a little knowledge of litigation experience are more dangerous than lay-clients themselves’, he pointed out.

Judge Talbot-Ponsonby ruled that costs should be awarded against Bakhsh on an indemnity basis. 'There have been numerous applications to extend the time for this and not only that but there have been numerous changes of legal adviser for the defendants, often at last notice', the judge said.

‘I do think that the number of times in which the defendants’ legal advisers have changed so that the claimants had to start making arrangements all over again, with new legal advisers, is out of the norm and sufficiently far out of the norm and unreasonable to make costs on the indemnity basis.’

The judge said the total costs came to £11,039.84 and ordered Bakhsh to pay within 14 days. A case management conference in the possession claim and counter-claim was listed for 1 August.

 

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