Solicitor referred to SRA by judge over 'fabricated' £260k costs bill

A solicitor has been reported to the regulator over a costs bill which a judge found to be littered with false charges and fabricated sums. Costs Judge James said there had been ‘significant misconduct’ in the presentation of a final bill for almost £260,000 which she assessed at nil.

The judge said she would report Sukhraj Multani, sole practitioner with Southall firm RH Solicitors Ltd, and would send a copy of the judgment as part of the referral.

Reviewing the set of invoices presented by Multani, James said the contents were of ‘grave concern and indicated serious misconduct on a number of issues’.

‘It is one thing to allow scope for a bill to pick up the odd matter that may have been overlooked when an interim invoice was issued,’ added the judge. ‘It is entirely different to suggest that, many years after the fact, a Grade A fee earner can claim time spent/work done for not just one but many hearings that were attended by a clerk.’

The underlying litigation involved a boundary dispute going back to 2010, where the majority of work for the defendant was undertaken by RH Solicitors.

The work had gone on for so long that the bill should have been split into work pre and post April 2013 when the Jackson reforms kicked in. The final bill did not split this work, nor did it mention where hearings had resulted in no order for costs.

The judge’s examination of the bill showed multiple examples where costs were claimed with no basis. In one case, the client was invoiced around £13,000 for work and the sum claimed was three times as much. None of the invoices claimed VAT on costs or displayed a VAT number, but in the bill VAT was claimed throughout.

Multani claimed for her time in preparing for and attending four interim hearings, but the judge found she had not attended any, instead sending a clerk.

‘It is clearly both unreasonable and improper to have claimed Ms Multani’s attendance at court on multiple dates when she was not there,’ added the judge.

Various attendance notes were not deemed to be contemporaneous, with ‘scores if not hundreds’ of attendance notes which ‘all look the same as to font, font size and layout’ and which were added at a much later date.

Regrettably, the judge said, a claim for 12 hours to prepare documents was ‘substantially fabricated’.

The judge said the costs adviser to RH Solicitors, named as a Mr S Kumar, was not regulated but warranted investigation. She accepted that counsel was not aware of what was on Multani’s files and was not subject to criticism.

In a statement to the Gazette, Multani said she has appealed the judge's decision and has yet to receive any correspondence from the SRA pertaining to the referral.

She alleges that the costs draftsman has admitted full liability for the misconduct but said she is awaiting a transcript to verify this.