The Office of Legal Cost Adjudicators’ 2023 annual report reveals that a contested legal fees bill of €305,356 originating from tribunal works was slashed nearly by 40% upon scrutiny by the office. Legal charges challenged from three libel and slander cases, amounting to €821,923, were approximately halved (to €415,396) following an assessment. The report further reveals that when three Supreme Court appeals’ fees of €397,517 were contested, they were cut down to €75,323 that represents just 19% of the initial amount claimed.
A total of 181 decisions made in 2023 by the office resulted in the contested claims of €22.8 million being dwindled down by €8.9 million, representing forty per cent of the original claim, the report shows. If parties dispute over legal charges linked to court proceedings, they can resort to the Office of Legal Cost Adjudicators for a determination.
Unidentified parties in the report contested €7.19 million from fifteen medical negligence cases, but the adjudicated amount was only €3.9 million, slashing the average in each case by €205,658. A land sale case had its claimed legal costs of €60,668 sliced in half to €29,469 upon adjudication.
According to Paul Behan, the outgoing chief legal cost adjudicator, the valid applications recorded in 2023 were 1,015, of which 996 moved to adjudication, scaling up by 12% compared to the preceding year. However, the value of legal cases filed in 2023, totalling €163.5 million, significantly shrunk down compared to the €192.4 million in 2022.
Medical negligence lawsuits, totalling 67 in number and claiming fees amounting to €39,974,904, constituted over a third of the worth of unresolved cases until the close of the year. In instances where the legal costs adjudicator’s decision wasn’t satisfactory, aggrieved parties could seek a review hearing from the High Court. Throughout 2023, 21 review applications were logged, with five connected to medical negligence lawsuits with claimed fees equalling €3.5 million; this formed over half of the disputed €5.8 million.