[2025] EWHC 2307 (KB)

The defendants’ accepted offer to the claimants amounted to £1 million per week of trial. The equivalent figures for Tranche 2 for the Lead and ALGLO defendants was an allowance of either £4 million or £5 million. The claimants have offered £4 million and three of the four defendants whose fees remain in dispute have counter proposed £4.5 million. In our view there is an appropriateness to the claimants’ budget being twice that of any individual defendant’s budget and so we prefer the claimants’ offer of £4 million. We do not agree that the Nissan Authorised Dealerships are in an equivalent position to the Non-ALGLO defendants given their larger role. We have allowed the sum claimed (and which is therefore similar to the sum allowed for the trial phase).

Uniquely, the claimants’ offer of £65,000 for this phase has been rejected by all of the Non-ALGLO defendants. It became clear during the oral submissions that at least part of this rejection resulted from the expected cost of the Opus 2 services taking a considerable sum from the budget. This was not a consistent figure but more than one defendant recorded a disbursement of over £11,000 for this item, or 17% of the offered budget.

Seven of the Non-ALGLO defendants have budgeted between roughly £80,000 and £95,000. In our view, these sums are in the correct area to allow for suitable brief fees, the Opus 2 charges and the solicitors’ time for preparing for the limited involvement in the Quantum Trial. The other three defendants have claimed approximately £145,000, £155,000 or £225,000 which cannot be reasonable in our view. The common thread in these three budgets is the extensive use of leading and junior counsel estimated at £95,000 to £150,000. Many of the other defendants have budgeted for the input of both leading and junior counsel but at a much more proportionate expense. It is a matter for these defendants as to how they cut their legal cloth but the difference between the total cost of doing so is currently stark.

The claimants’ offer of £65,000 is based on the Tranche 2 allowance of £50,000. We do not think that offer is sufficient; regardless of the figure arrived at for Tranche 2. Adding a sum for the Opus 2 charges brings us to a figure of £80,000 and we have therefore decided that proposed budgets between £80,000 and 20% above that sum (£96,000) should be allowed and budgets in excess of that top figure should be restricted to it.