Cases - Buckland v Watts
Record details
- Name
- Buckland v Watts
- Date
- (1968) [1970]
- Citation
- 208 EG 969; 1 QB 27, CA
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Construction claim - loss and expense claim - litigant in person - costs - recoverability of litigant in person's costs - legal research - recoverability of time spent on legal research - negligence in valuations and surveys
- Summary
-
[1968]
The claimant, after he had exchanged contracts to purchase a house, but before completion, discovered defects in the property that the defendant's survey had negligently failed to reveal. He thereupon refused to complete the purchase. The claimant was held entitled to recover damages from the surveyor in respect of the deposit which he forfeited to the vendor and also his wasted conveyancing costs.
[1970]
The position of a litigant in person who had claimed for his time in researching the law but who was not himself a solicitor was not entitled to claim costs accrued in preparing his case. The Court rooted its decision in The London Scottish Benefit Society v Chorley to reiterate that a professional solicitor should only be able to recover any costs in respect of work that would usually be done by a professionally qualified solicitor. A non-solicitor could not recover in respect of his own legal research.
(Note that a litigant in person may recover generally for his (legal) work done on his case, although CPR 48.6 places an absolute cap on the amount recoverable (namely two thirds of the sum which would have been allowed if the litigant in person had been represented by a legal representative). The litigant in person can recover for the same categories of costs and disbursements which would have been allowed if the work had been done, or the disbursements made, by a legal representative on the litigant's behalf. The onus is on the litigant in person to prove financial loss in respect of any item of work, failing which the amount recoverable is fixed by statutory instrument (currently £9.25 per hour).)
A further proposition was advanced by Sir Gordon Willmer, who suggested that professionals might only recover something in respect of their own skill in so far as they qualified as witnesses. This is clearly inconsistent with Re Nossen's Letter Patent.