Law Weblog

Conditional Fees (no win no fee) criticised by ECHR

Wednesday 19 January 2011 at 6:52 am | In News | Post Comment The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg yesterday (18 January 2011) ruled in favour of Mirror Group Newspapers in a judgment that is likely to have significant ramifications for future privacy and libel cases, because the fee arrangements were flawed.

The court found that the “depth and nature of the flaws” in the no win, no fee payments system is in breach of the European convention on human rights.

The Strasbourg court ruled that the result of the fee arrangement was “disproportionate”, and that it exceeded even the broad margin of appreciation accorded to the government in such matters.
The judgment questions the whole system of CFAs which may need to be changed by the government. The recovery of such fees from defendants makes some cases impossibly expensive to pursue.

There is already a consultation exercise for reform of conditional fee arrangements, including success fees which followed the review by Lord Justice Jackson in 2010 which recommended lawyers in “no win, no fee” civil cases should no longer have a “success fee” paid by the defendants, but should get a share of damages.
At the time he said the system was not benefiting the public, with fees to lawyers sometimes amounting to more than 1,000% of damages.
The report suggested a 25% limit on the share of damages paid to lawyers in a successful claim.
However, the ECHR ruled by six votes to one that there was no breach of the Daily Mirror’s freedom of expression in the earlier UK court judgment that the paper had invaded Campbell’s privacy.

The case has taken 10 years to get this far.

Guardian here