[2025] EWHC 2307 (KB)

The defendants’ claims for costs under this phase are about £5.2 million. This is a considerably smaller task than in Tranche 2 where £17 million was allowed (and twice as much was claimed).

The claimants pointed to the costs of Ford for this phase which had been agreed at £743,098.00. They had ten Sample Claimants and had offered additional voluntary disclosure. The agreed figure should, according to the claimants, be a cap on the other defendants’ aspirations. It does not however seem to us that one defendant’s approach to record keeping, and therefore available documents for disclosure, can be assumed to bear much relation to another’s. Excluding the Nissan dealerships, the other Lead and ALGLO defendants have all sought more than Ford and the three highest – Mercedes, Nissan and PCD all produced very similar figures in the region of £1.2m.

We have found the PCD budgeting to be generally more pessimistic than the other defendants and we note that Mercedes was criticised by the court for its proposed budget in this phase of Tranche 2. We have therefore exercised a little caution, notwithstanding the similarity of the calculations, to allow up to £1 million here.

In respect of Vauxhall, it is the only Non-ALGLO budget in dispute. The input of these defendants to the disclosure is to produce a combined bundle of up to 3,000 pages. Having compared the times claimed by Vauxhall with other defendants, the 70 hours sought for the relevant tasks is similar to others. Nevertheless, the sum claimed of £73,782.45 is considerably higher than the other Non-ALGLO defendants. It is not the function of this exercise to set hourly rates but it is clear on this occasion that it is the rates claimed which have resulted in the higher budget sought. 65 of the 70 hours claimed are calculated at rates above £900 per hour. We have reduced the amount claimed to the claimants’ offer which was above the sums actually claimed by all of the other defendants save for BMW.