The claimant filed a default costs certificate (DCC) for £364,000 in mid-June. However, the defendant did not apply to set aside the bill for another month and, due to technical difficulties, this was initially done via paper and therefore rejected. Consequently, the defendant’s application was not served until mid-August.
The defendant’s costs draftsman, Philip Gaskell, director, QM Legal Costs Solutions, explained he experienced a surge in workload in January and February. He transferred work to colleagues but there was a reallocation error in the Masten case. He believed the error would have come to light but for the COVID-19 lockdown on 17 March when his small business ‘had to cope with moving from having 5% of work undertaken by staff working from home to 95%. That was particularly difficult because 70% of the files worked on were paper files.’ Gaskell and his wife also had childcare duties for an extra three and a half days a week.
Master Leonard declined to grant relief.
Delivering his judgment, he said: ‘This case was, on Mr Gaskell's evidence, the only case handled by QM Costs on which default had arisen and he had been given fair warning that application would be made for a DCC.
‘One would expect therefore that this case would have been treated as exceptionally urgent…Instead, the case was allowed to go entirely adrift. Lockdown then exacerbated the effect of failures that had already occurred.’
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