By Lucy Caulkett And Andrew Young-
A joint owner of a law firm who overcharged the NHS millions of pounds for clinical negligence costs has been fined £30,000 for unmeritorious legal fees. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal concluded that Andrew Good, who set up H Rapid Response, a Hull based law firm, presided over a policy where the firm secretly charged too much for work often carried out by junior members of staff.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority(SRA), which regulates over 18,000 solicitors in the Uk, told the tribunal that overcharging was ‘planned, deliberate and conducted on a grand scale”, over a long period, and through a large number of cases solely for the purpose of enriching the owners of the firm’.
Victoria Fear, a salaried partner and second most senior solicitor after Good at the firm, was reprimanded by the tribunal, and concluded to have been responsible for her own failings. Fear told the tribunal that she had simply taken orders from Good, and that if she were in charge, she would not have approved the excessive charges of £400 an hour fees.
The Tribunal considered that as the architect of the regime and the senior partner, mr Good was most responsible and should pay the greatest proportion of costs. That proportion was calculated at 75% of the assessed costs, this being the appropriate and proportionate contribution given his higher level blame. Danielle fear was not involved in the costs department or the rendering of excessive bills, so her culpability meant that 5% of the assessed costs was appropriate and proportionate in the circumstances.
Danielle Park, a solicitor at the firm, denied misconduct allegations and was cleared by the tribunal.
UNMERITORIOUS
Costs practices introduced by Good, the tribunal said, were an ‘unmeritorious and unwarranted planned attempt to seek inflated and unjustifiable costs’.The tribunal found that Good acted without integrity in breaching principle 2 of the Solicitors Regulation Authority(SRA) and Principle 6 in that such conduct, as regards the period
between 6 October 2011 and 24 October 2014, thereby undermining the trust the public placed in the Respondents and likely to diminish the trust the public placed in them and the legal profession.
Good owned a 50% stake in the business he founded in 2003, came to regulators’ attention when concerns were raised in 2013 by the NHS Litigation Authority (now NHS Resolution) about possible overcharging. By that stage, Rapid Response had ceased to exist as an independent entity and the business transferred to another firm.
The tribunal concluded that mr.Good did not pose a future risk to the public or the reputation of the profession to an extent that required him to be subjected to professional restrictions. His misconduct had been limited to the costs claimed in clinical negligence cases, and was unlikely to be repeated. The Tribunal considered that
given the limited extent of mr.Good’s misconduct, it was not necessary to remove him from practice. The Tribunal assessed the First Respondent’s
The Tribunal concluded that Ms Fear had no motivation for her misconduct which was as a result of her failure to properly review the policies and processes of the costs department. It accepted that she was not the cause of the excessive rates charged. The tribunal also concluded that there were no aggravating features of her misconduct and that her fault level was low. Also, her demonstration of insight into her misconduct and her full co-operation with the investigation meant her misconduct justified a sanction at the lowest level, the tribunal concluded. The tribunal considered it appropriate to restrict her ability to act as a COLP or COFA of a Firm for 2 years, but not to ban her indefinitely.
Rapid Response had regularly charged a £400 hourly rate and 100% success fees on clinical negligence cases, but of the £6.5m claimed in costs from 151 cited cases, the firm had recovered less than £1.5m.
Acumension Ltd, which acted for authority, had described the bills invoiced as ‘beyond obscene’ and had informed the firm in October 2013, it was withdrawing all offers of settlement of claims for costs. Of the 151 cases examined, 22 had incurred the £400 hourly rate.
PLANNED
The SRA told the tribunal that overcharging was ‘planned, deliberate and conducted on a grand scale, over a long period, and through a large number of cases solely for the purpose of enriching the owners of the firm’.
Good, a solicitor for 20 years, argued that the SRA could not prove it was routine to submit excessive bills, nor that he caused or even knew the bills to be inflated. He said it was ‘perfectly lawful’ and industry practice to fix the success fee at 100%, with no requirement to amend or review success fees with hindsight. He submitted the tribunal could not be sure that any overcharging amounted to misconduct.
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