[2025] EWHC 2307 (KB)

This phase was budgeted, as discussed at the hearing, on the basis of there being 40 Sample Claimants. The alignment of witness statements as described in the claimants’ budget assumptions ought to be limited as discussed above. The defendants’ offer of £50,000 for the Lead and ALGLO budget was preferred for this work.

In respect of the GLO specific budgets, once the non-lead work was removed from the Mercedes budget, the figures were all but the same. They included £43,750 in each budget for Oliver Lawson of Milberg to provide “advice on technical matters, consider and provide strategic guidance on the approach to witness statements and review drafts”. Given the number of other solicitors and barristers instructed by the claimants in these proceedings, we cannot conceive how such advice could reasonably be incurred between the parties and have disallowed it as a result.