Building And Construction Disputes - Who Is Responsible For Legal Costs In Court Cases?

If you win your case most of your legal fees will be recovered from the losing party, but not all of them. Firstly you should consider what track the court has allocated your proceedings to go through. If your case is defended then there are three different tracks that you might be allocated to, these are the small claims track, the fast track, and the multi-track. Each track will have an effect on the court procedure that you will need to go through.

This also goes for the amount of costs that you can recover from the losing party. If your claim is for £5,000 or less, you will be allocated to the small claims track, where you will be unlikely to be able to claim back anything other than the court fee. If your claim is between £5,000 - £15,000 then you will be allocated to the fast track and the costs that you will be able to recover will also be limited. Even if your claim is over £15,000 you cannot expect the losing side to pay for all your legal fees. Standard practise is for the losing party to pay some of the winner's costs but not all of them and even this can be subject to a judge's opinion.

If you make an application to the judge for the other party to uncover a piece of information which you believe will be important to the outcome of case and the judge denies your right to the order, the judge will order you to pay some of the other party's costs in respect to your application. You also need to consider the fact that many court cases involve more than just one issue and that each issue may be awarded to a different party. The amount of costs that will be awarded will be worked out by a percentage of the case that was won or lost as well as the final decision.

You must also take into account that only reasonable and proportionate costs will be awarded to you if you win. This is determined by the overall value of the case and what the judge deems as a reasonable amount to pay. If you have incurred costs which the judge does not believe are proportionate, then they will go through them and only order contributions towards the ones that are.

There are several reasons why a judge may decide to increase or decrease the amount of costs that the losing side has to contribute. These include the behaviour of both parties toward each other before proceedings began and the way that the proceedings were conducted and efforts that were made to resolve the case.

I am a legal writer covering advice on topics of law, for further text and similar works visit building and construction disputes or contact a solicitor today.

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