UK: Judge blasts ‘wasteful’ lawyers who filed 6,000-page bundles

High Court judge has issued a stern rebuke to lawyers who ran up massive costs and lumbered the court with voluminous bundles.

Despite being just an examination of the apparent strength of the claimant’s claims in Invest Bank PSC v El-Husseini & Ors, Mr Justice Andrew Baker explained the hearing bundles ran to more than 6,000 pages, with nearly 160 pages of skeleton arguments. The authorities bundles alone contained 142 tabs and more than 3,600 pages for the two-day hearing in February.

Baker said witness statements were ‘improperly replete’ with argument, the documentary material was mostly unopened, and there appeared to have been no attempt to follow commercial court guidance on what authorities to include.

Costs schedules filed by Streathers Solicitors LLP, Fladgate LLP and Stewarts LLP, who represented seven of the eight defendants between them, came to £680,000 already, and the judge said the total costs incurred on this hearing was likely to exceed £1m.

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