A City firm has been lambasted by a judge for a costs bill fiasco which saw clients applying for relief at the High Court.

BDB Pitmans LLP is representing Jersey Company Stargunter Ltd as it defends itself against a claim over building works at a Chelsea townhouse, the court heard.

The claimant - litigation funder Henderson and Jones Ltd - is seeking £980,802 after Stargunter sought to terminate a construction contract over alleged delays, a judge heard.

Ahead of a costs and case management conference scheduled for 7 July, BDB Pitmans had to serve Stargunter’s costs budget no later than Thursday 15 June.

Henderson served a budget of £492,400 in time, but Stargunter’s budget was served 'materially incomplete', Neil Moody KC, sitting as a High Court judge, said. 'The document was unsigned, there were no incurred or estimated costs in respect of statements of case or the CCMC, and there were two differing front sheets,' Moody said.

'The first totalled to £338,084, and the second totalled to £144,812. The second front sheet included figures for pre-action and statement of case costs but, for all other phases, against the totals it stated ‘TBA’. It was not verified by a statement of truth.'

Stargunter served a second budget the following week. 'This was complete, but the total budgeted sum was now put at £891,897, the judge said. 

Stargunter sought to rely upon its second budget and provided a witness statement from BDB Pitmans partner David Gwillim.

Gwillim, who was based in the firm’s Reading office, said he had instructed a trainee legal executive in the London office to prepare a budget. He said: 'He reported to me on the morning of June 15 by Zoom that the Excel spreadsheet had not populated the first page, there appeared to be some issues with the formulae and the totals were not adding up.

Gwillim phoned the firm's specialist to find out if they could use her dedicated costs software, but she explained she was attending a training course and was unable to access the system.

'I considered the draft Excel spreadsheet, and I was dismayed to discover that a considerable number of entries had corrupted and did not accurately represent the budgeted costs,' Gwillim said. 'I removed as many of the incorrect entries as I could. I attempted to apply my electronic signature to the form, but I was unable to do so.'

After all attempts to correct the spreadsheet failed, the firm submitted the incomplete form on Monday 15 June. 

The judge said the breach of the civil procedure rules was neither serious nor significant but added there was 'plainly no good reason for the default'.

Moody said: 'The breach occurred because of inefficiency in Stargunter’s solicitors’ offices. The budget was left to the last minute, the IT systems were inoperable and the relevant people were not available. That cannot amount to a good reason.'

But overall, Moody felt the mistake was an 'isolated and unintentional one, due in large part to IT difficulties rather than any deliberate non-compliance with the rules'.

Stargunter’s application for relief from the sanction in CPR rule 3.14 succeeded, and Moody gave permission for it to rely upon its second cost budget.

A BDB Pitmans spokesperson said: 'The issue was remedied almost immediately by the serving of a compliant costs budget. There was no effect on the proceedings.'