LSC Approach to assessment of Experts' Fees in Clinical Negligence Cases

My understanding has always been that whether or not prior authority for a disbursement was obtained was immaterial, as long as one could demonstrate the the disbursement was reasonable, in which case it would be allowed in any event.

The LSC are now however taking a different view, as the decision of an "Independent Costs Assessor" [who are these people?] on a recent appeal would appear to demonstrate.

In short, we investigated Mrs.L's treatment in hospital when, following a routine surgical procedure, she suffered a stroke. We instructed a Consultant Neurologist and a Consultant Neuroradiologist, both of whom had been part of a selection recommended by AvMA.

They both reviewed 11 years' worth of medical records and reported on liability and causation, and both spent an hour in conference with Counsel, when sadly it was decided that there was no case to answer.

The aggregate fees (for report and conference) were £1,000 and £1,150  for neurologist and neuroradiologist respectively, both of whom charged a rate of £250 per hour. The overall claim for costs was less than £5,000. So...a good job had been done for a reasonable fee - what could possibly go wrong?

Well the LSC decided that a neurologist is worth £170 per hour and a neuroradiologist £190 per hour. Not that much difference you say, but then on an LSC case with small margins, it is actually the difference between making and losing money. Purely on hourly rate the fees were reduced by £710. Our profit costs......£890. So bearing in mind that we are professionally bound to pay the experts in full, we had actually conducted this case for £180! That works out at slightly more than £12 per hour.

So we took umbrage and appealed.

With a remarkable lack of good grace the LSC's "Independent Costs Assessor" has allowed the appeal in part -

Yes, it was reasonable to instruct these particular experts

Yes, we recognise that they are specialists

Yes, we accept that everything was done economically and we have no criticism of the time spent by the experts........

BUT.....

"I consider, however,that £250 per hour for each of these experts is an excessively high figure where the rate has not been subject to the scrutiny of the prior authority procedure and without indication as to whether other experts were approached for fee estimates"

The experts were in fact allowed at £200 per hour, which means that we only have a £550 shortfall in experts fees and have therefore billed close on £24 per hour for this case, which is about half of what the LSC used to pay when I first started 25 years ago!

Good to see we are taking Access to Justice seriously still!