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Law - duty of advocates

Judgments - Medcalf v Weatherill and Another

52. It follows that the willingness of professional advocates to represent litigants should not be undermined either by creating conflicts of interest or by exposing the advocates to pressures which will tend to deter them from representing certain clients or from doing so effectively. In England the professional rule that a barrister must be prepared to represent any client within his field of practice and competence and the principles of professional independence underwrite in a manner too often taken for granted this constitutional safeguard. Unpopular and seemingly unmeritorious litigants must be capable of being represented without the advocate being penalised or harassed whether by the Executive, the Judiciary or by anyone else. Similarly, situations must be avoided where the advocate's conduct of a case is influenced not by his duty to his client but by concerns about his own self-interest.
53. Thus the advocate owes no duty to his client's opponent; inevitably, the proper discharge by the advocate of his duty to his own client will more often than not be disadvantageous to the interests of his client's opponent. (Orchard v S E Electricity Bd [1987] QB 565, 571) At times, the proper discharge by the advocate of his duties to his client will be liable to bring him into conflict with the court. This does not alter the duty of the advocate. It may require more courage to represent a client in the face of a hostile court but the advocate must still be prepared to act fearlessly. It is part of the duty of an advocate, where necessary, appropriately to protect his client from the court as well as from the opposing party. Similarly, the advocate acting in good faith is entitled to protection from outside pressures for what he does as an advocate. Thus, what the advocate says in the course of the legal proceedings is privileged and he cannot be sued for defamation. For similar reasons the others involved in the proceedings (eg the judge, the witness) have a similar immunity.
54. The professional advocate is in a privileged position. He is granted rights of audience. He enjoys certain immunities. In return he owes certain duties to the court and is bound by certain standards of professional conduct in accordance with the code of conduct of his profession. This again reflects the public interest in the proper administration of justice; the public interest, covering the litigants themselves as well, is now also expressed in Part I of the Civil Procedure Rules. (See also Practice Direction 16 §9.) The advocate must respect and uphold the authority of the court. He must not be a knowing party to an abuse of process or a deceit of the court. He must conduct himself with reasonable competence. He must take reasonable and practicable steps to avoid unnecessary expense or waste of the court's time. The codes of conduct of the advocate's profession spell out the detailed provisions to be derived from the general principles. These include the provisions relevant to barristers which preclude them from making allegations, whether orally or in writing, of fraud or criminal guilt unless he has a proper basis for so doing. Paragraph 606(c), which has already been quoted by my noble and learned friend, requires express instructions and reasonably credible material which as it stands establishes a prima facie case of fraud. All this fits in well with an appropriate constitutional structure for a judicial system for the administration of justice.
55. The introduction of a wasted costs jurisdiction makes an inroad into this structure. It creates a risk of a conflict of interest for the advocate. It is intended and designed to affect the conduct of the advocate and to do so by penalising him economically. Ideally a conflict should not arise. The advocate's duty to his own client is subject to his duty to the court: the advocate's proper discharge of his duty to his client should not cause him to be accused of being in breach of his duty to the court. (Arthur Hall v Simons [2000] 3 WLR 543) But the situation in which the advocate finds himself may not be so clear cut. Difficult tactical decisions may have to be made, maybe in difficult circumstances. Opinions can differ, particularly in the heated and stressed arena of litigation. Once an opposing party is entitled to apply for an order against the other party's legal representatives, the situation becomes much more unpredictable and hazardous for the advocate. Adversarial perceptions are introduced. This is a feature of what happened in the present case. The factors which may motivate a hostile application by an opponent are liable to be very different from those which would properly motivate a court.
56. In my judgment, the jurisdiction must be approached with considerable caution and the relevant provisions of s.51 construed and applied so as not to impinge upon the constitutional position of the advocate and the contribution he is required to make on behalf of his client in the administration of civil justice. The judgment in Ridehalgh referred to most of the relevant points.
First, from the point of view of the advocate the jurisdiction is penal. It involves making a finding of fault against the advocate and visiting upon him a financial sanction. Unlike the position between the advocate and his own client where the potential for liability will encourage the performance of the advocate's duty to his client (see Arthur Hall v Simons, sup) and the order would be truly compensatory, the jurisdiction to make orders at the instance of and in favour of the opposing party gives rise to wholly different considerations for the advocate. The risk of such an application can, at best, only provide a distraction in the proper representation of his own client and, at worst, may cause him to put his own interests above those of his client. The construction of the section and the application of the jurisdiction should accordingly be no wider than is clearly required by the statute.
Secondly, the fault must, in the present context, relate clearly to a fault in relation to the advocate's duty to the court not in relation to the opposing party, to whom he owes no duty.
Thirdly, the terms used in subsection (7) should receive an appropriately restrictive interpretation in relation to advocates. The judgment in Ridehalgh spelled this out at p.232 of the report. The use of the first two terms, improper and unreasonable, call for no further explanation. The word negligent raises additional problems of interpretation which are not material to the present appeal since the respondents' allegation against the appellants is impropriety not negligence. But it would appear that the inclusion of the word negligent in substitution for "reasonable competence", is directed primarily to the jurisdiction as between a legal representative and his own client. It is possible to visualise situations where the negligence of an advocate might justify the making of a wasted costs order which included both parties, such as where an advocate fails to turn up on an adjourned hearing so that a hearing date is lost. The breach of the advocate's duty to the court will be clear and if the breach was not deliberate, the term negligent would best describe it. For a person exercising a right to conduct litigation (ie a litigation agent) it is less difficult to think of apt examples affecting the other side as was the situation in Myers v Elman [1940] AC 282. The use of the same language in subsection (7) in relation to both categories of legal representative does not mean that it will have the same breadth of application for both categories.
Fourthly, it is the duty of the advocate to present his client's case even though he may think that it is hopeless and even though he may have advised his client that it is. (Ridehalgh pp.233-4) So it is not enough that the court considers that the advocate has been arguing a hopeless case. The litigant is entitled to be heard; to penalise the advocate for presenting his client's case to the court would be contrary to the constitutional principles to which I have referred. The position is different if the court concludes that there has been improper time-wasting by the advocate or the advocate has knowingly lent himself to an abuse of process. However it is relevant to bear in mind that, if a party is raising issues or is taking steps which have no reasonable prospect of success or are scandalous or an abuse of process, both the aggrieved party and the court have powers to remedy the situation by invoking summary remedies - striking out - summary judgment - peremptory orders etc. The making of a wasted costs order should not be the primary remedy; by definition it only arises once the damage has been done. It is a last resort.
Practical Consequences:
57. The practical consequences of the wider use of the jurisdiction, particularly where the client's opponent is the applicant, were also commented upon in Ridehalgh. The first and most striking is that it creates satellite litigation which too easily gets out of proportion to the litigation which has spawned it. The present case provides an educational but far from extreme illustration. The principal trial was not wholly straightforward, involving successive amendments of the pleadings, questions of legal analysis and bitterly contradictory oral evidence but the trial judge was able to deliver his judgment at the end of the trial without having to reserve it. He held in favour of the existence of a partnership and ordered an account of profits. After various contested interlocutory applications both to the judge and to the Court of Appeal, the Court of Appeal, in March 2000, unanimously dismissed Mr Mardell's appeal, dismissing also his application to amend the notice of appeal and adduce fresh evidence. A month later the main action was settled. The wasted costs application has occupied the following two years with a further full hearing in the Court of Appeal and an appeal to your Lordships' House. If the policy of the wasted costs jurisdiction is to reduce the costs of litigation and to save court time, it too often fails to achieve this objective (as is confirmed by the Modern Law Review article already referred to). The jurisdiction is discretionary and should be reserved for those cases where the unjustifiable conduct can be demonstrated without recourse to disproportionate procedures. (See also Harley v McDonald [2001] 2 AC 678.) The jurisdiction does not exist as an end in itself; it is distinct from the professional disciplinary structures. The procedures appropriate for wasted costs applications were discussed in Ridehalgh at pp.238-9.
58. Once the power to initiate wasted costs procedures is extended to the opposite party in the litigation, that party is provided with a weapon which it is too much to expect he will not on occasions attempt to use to his own advantage in unacceptable ways. It must not be used as a threat to intimidate the lawyers on the other side. (Ridehalgh at p.237, citing Orchard v S E Electricity Bd [1987] QB 565) It should not be motivated simply by resentment at an inability to obtain an effective order for costs against an assisted or impecunious litigant. (Ridehalgh at p.231, citing Symphony v Hodgson [1994] QB 179) Nor should it be used as a means of continuing contentious litigation by other means or to obtain from a party's lawyers what cannot be obtained from the party himself. The legitimate interest of an applicant for a wasted costs order is financial, a reduction in the costs he has to bear, but the application must be merits based and clearly made out; it must not raise a suspicion of being itself abusive.
59. A further consequence of exercising the jurisdiction on the application of an opposite party is that it raises questions of the legal professional privilege of the lawyer's client. The client very probably will have no interest in waiving the privilege. Indeed the client may stand to gain if his opponent can look to the client's lawyer for an indemnity rather than to the client himself. This situation creates a serious problem which may lead to the emasculation of the wasted costs jurisdiction as between the opposing party and the advocate. The appellants argue that in cases such as the present it should do so: fairness requires that the privileged material should be before the court; if it cannot be, the application for wasted costs should fail. They submit that this argument must be conclusive.
Legal Professional Privilege:
60. As already observed by my noble and learned friend Lord Steyn, the nature and extent of legal professional privilege has not been in question on this appeal nor has it been the subject of any argument. Its absolute and paramount character has been accepted by the respondents, citing R v Derby Magistrates' Court, ex parte 'B' [1996] AC 487 and General Mediterranean Holdings v Patel [2000] 1 WLR 272. However, the need of a lawyer to be able to ask a court to look at privileged material when a lawyer's conduct is in question may not be so intractable. The material in question may be confidential rather than absolutely privileged. (Parry-Jones v The Law Society [1969] 1 Ch 1) It may be possible to restrict the use which can be made of the disclosed material so as to reduce or remove the infringement of the client's privilege. (See per Glidewell LJ in R v Commissioners of Inland Revenue ex parte Taylor (No.2) 62 TC 578 at p.588.) It may be that partially inquisitorial procedures can be adopted, as in the inter partes taxation of costs. It should be remembered that the subject matter of the wasted costs application is an alleged breach of the lawyer's duty to the court and it is not unique that a lawyer may have to refer to privileged material in the context of explaining himself to the court and defining his relationship to the court as, for example, when a litigation agent is applying to come off the record or a barrister is ceasing to represent an assisted defendant during the course of a criminal trial. It may be that, as in the context of Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the privilege may not always be absolute and a balancing exercise may sometimes be necessary. (Campbell v UK (13590/88) 15 EHRR 137 and Foxley v UK (33274/96) 31 EHRR 25) But on the present appeal it must be taken that the material which the appellants say is relevant may not directly or indirectly be made available to the court with the result that it is open to the appellants to argue that the Court of Appeal must have acted unfairly in making a wasted costs order against them..
61. The point was specifically considered in Ridehalgh at pp.236-7:
"The privilege is not theirs to waive. ...... So the respondent lawyers may find themselves at a grave disadvantage in defending their conduct of proceedings, unable to reveal what advice and warnings they gave, what instructions they received. In some cases this potential source of injustice may be mitigated by reference to the taxing master, where different rules apply, but only in a small minority of cases can this procedure be appropriate. Judges who are invited to make or contemplate making a wasted costs order must make full allowance for the inability of respondent lawyers to tell the whole story. Where there is room for doubt, the respondent lawyers are entitled to the benefit of it. It is again only when, with all allowances made, a lawyer's conduct of proceedings is quite plainly unjustifiable that it can be appropriate to make a wasted costs order." (emphasis supplied)
The answer given therefore was not to treat the existence of privileged material as an absolute bar to any claim by an opposite party for a wasted costs order but to require the court to take into account the possibility of the existence of such material and to give the lawyers the benefit of every reasonably conceivable doubt that it might raise. So, all that the lawyer has to do is to raise a doubt in the mind of the court whether there might not be privileged material which could affect its decision whether or not to make a wasted costs order and, if so, in what terms and the court must give the lawyer the benefit of that doubt in reaching its decision, including the exercise of its statutory discretion. I see nothing unfair about this approach. Further, if the use of the jurisdiction on the application of an opposite party is kept within the proper bounds, the frequency with which the problem arises of taking into account the existence of possibly relevant but unseen privileged material should be much reduced.
62. The contrary submission of the appellants on this appeal treats the existence of privileged material as a kind of trump card which will always preclude the making of a wasted costs order on the application of an opposite party. They ask how can a court evaluate whether privileged material which, ex hypothesi, it has not seen would affect its decision without first seeing that material. But this argument does not reflect what was said in Ridehalgh. Once the lawyer is given the benefit of any doubt, any element of unfairness is removed. It must depend upon the circumstances of each particular case. For example, a lawyer who has to ask for an extension of time or an adjournment because, say, he has forgotten about a time-limit or has accidentally left his papers at home, would not be able to say that any privileged material could possibly excuse his incompetent mistake. To make a wasted costs order against him would not (absent some additional factor) be inappropriate or unfair. In other situations privileged material may have a possible relevance and therefore require assumptions favourable to the lawyer to be made. Thus, in the present case it is assumed that in all respects the appellant barristers were acting on the express instructions of their lay clients although a finding of fact to that effect could only be made after the consideration of privileged material. The assumption removes the unfairness which might otherwise, in this respect, exist.
63. Therefore, for myself, I would not qualify what was said in Ridehalgh. But I agree that it may be salutary to remind parties that each case must depend upon its own facts and that the power to make an order is discretionary and material which could affect the exercise of that discretion is also relevant. I agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Bingham of Cornhill that the court must be satisfied before it makes the wasted costs order that there is nothing that the lawyer could say, if unconstrained, to resist the order and that it is in all the circumstances fair to make the order.
The Present Case:
64. The facts leading up to the making by the Court of Appeal of the wasted costs order against the barristers are fully set out in the Court of Appeal judgments and have been summarised in the Opinion of my noble and learned friend. The difference between the majority and the minority in the Court of Appeal was not in the test to be applied. All agreed that the barristers should be given the benefit of any doubt: see Peter Gibson LJ, [2001] Lloyd's Rep 146, at pp.153 and 157. The difference lay in the outcome of applying the test. Thus Peter Gibson LJ said at p.158 on behalf of himself and Schiemann LJ:
"Try though we might, we have not found it possible to conceive of any circumstances in which the barristers in putting their names to the particular allegations of impropriety in the draft amended notice of appeal and supporting them in their skeleton and at the hearing had relevant privileged or confidential material which justified their conduct as compliant with section 606 but had been withheld from the court."
On the other hand, Wilson J said (at p.162):
"I remain in doubt whether on 3 and 4 February the barristers were guilty of professional impropriety. It is doubt of which, pursuant to the same passage in Ridehalgh v Horsefield, they must have the benefit. It is better that in certain circumstances the wasted costs jurisdiction should be emasculated by the principle of legal professional privilege than vice versa."
65. With the one exception of the transcripts allegation, I agree that the preferable view is that the wasted costs order should not have been made. The complaint made on behalf of Mr Medcalf was that an application had been made to the Court of Appeal to allow the amendment of the notice of appeal and for the admission of fresh evidence which included allegations which could not properly be made. The application for a wasted costs order was based upon the draft amended notice and the accompanying skeleton argument. These documents were effectively simultaneous although dated one day apart (3 and 4 February 2000) and they were signed by the barristers. It was a consequence of these documents that additional time was taken up on the first two days (14 and 15 February) at the hearing of the appeal but there was not any additional waste of time caused by counsel taking excessive time to argue Mr Mardell's case. All the relevant points upon which the applications to amend and admit fresh evidence were based were hopeless and were roundly rejected by the Court of Appeal both at the time and in their unanimous written judgment dismissing the appeal. With the one exception already mentioned, I would put these points into the category of arguing a hopeless case. How they would ever persuade the Court of Appeal to allow the appeal and reverse the judge's judgment escapes me. They related to peripheral matters and, although the credibility of Mr Medcalf was central to the judge's decision and the attempt to upset it on appeal, they could not be thought sufficient, nor were they all novel. Speaking for myself, I would put these points into the category, not of impropriety, but of counsel discharging their duty to present even a hopeless case if instructed to do so, in which case no question of making a wasted costs order against them should have arisen. It must be remembered that the good faith of the barristers and their consciousness of the rules of their profession are not challenged nor is their statement that they acted upon their clients' express instructions. If it is considered that the barristers' inclusion of these points was improper, I would not arrive at that conclusion without feeling doubts which I would not wish to resolve without knowledge of the surrounding circumstances and the privileged material covering the relationship between the advocates and their client. I do not believe that in these circumstances it would be fair to exercise the discretion against the appellants.
The Transcripts Allegation:
66. This allegation was included in Ground 45 of the proposed amendments to the notice of appeal. It was in the following terms:
"The First and Fourth Defendants have fresh evidence that since the trial there has been interference with the official transcript of the trial. The First and Fourth Defendants have caused a second set of transcripts to be prepared by different transcribers. The first set of transcripts contain alterations, deletions, interpolations, and false certifications tending to the detriment of the First and Fourth Defendants' already disclosed grounds of appeal and attempting to buttress the learned Judge's Judgment, obscure perjured testimony and prevent the discovery of additional substantive grounds of appeal. The said interference casts such fundamental doubt upon the integrity of the plaintiff and the process of the court in this case that a new trial should be ordered ex debito justitiae."
This is an allegation of serious fraud and conspiracy involving not only Mr Medcalf but also the official court transcribers and, presumably, the plaintiffs' solicitors. The accompanying skeleton argument in 12 paragraphs identified the evidential material relied on, going back to the previous summer.
67. There are three important features which are essential to the proper evaluation of the allegation made in the proposed Ground 45. The appellants' argument failed to have any regard to them and the same could fairly be said of the dissenting judgment of Wilson J.
68. The first and most important is that the allegation was made as part of and was dependant upon a Ladd v Marshall (see [1954] 1 WLR 1489) application to admit fresh evidence in the Court of Appeal on appeal from a final judgment. The applicant has to identify and place before the Court of Appeal in documentary form the fresh evidence the subject of the application. The fresh evidence to support the relevant ground of appeal has thus to be fully disclosed. There is no room for the applicant to say that if you grant my application to adduce the fresh evidence then there is other evidence not adduced at the trial and not included in my application upon which I will also want to rely. The application is exhaustive of the opportunity to adduce fresh evidence in the Court of Appeal. In any event, the position was put beyond argument by an order of Clarke LJ on 28th January directing that any evidence to be relied on should be served by 4th February. The evidence placed before the Court of Appeal on behalf of Mr Mardell was the only evidence upon which Mr Mardell could rely in support of Ground 45 and upon which the advocates could rely as justifying the allegation in Ground 45 in compliance with Paragraph 606 of the Code of Conduct.
69. There has been a discussion whether Paragraph 606 is satisfied by an expectation of obtaining admissible evidence which has not yet been obtained. I do not wish to enter upon this discussion save to say that it is misconceived: the emphasis should be upon whether the existing material discloses a prima facie case, which is a concept well understood in many areas of procedural law, not least in the criminal law. The question which the advocate must ask is: is there a prima facie case of the fraud which I am going to allege? It is important not in any way to devalue the important principle encapsulated in Paragraph 606. But, in any event the 'expectation' excuse cannot, and could not on any hypothesis, assist the appellants here. At the early stages of litigation, before the close of pleadings, some of the relevant evidence supporting an allegation may not yet have been put into a form which can actually be used at the trial; discovery may yet have to take place but a party may know what documents will have to be produced on discovery. At the stage of trial, evidence which has not been given and the advocate cannot adduce cannot be relied upon to justify an allegation. After trial and judgment, the situation is even more clear cut. Only evidence already adduced in the action or for which leave to adduce is given by the Court of Appeal under Ladd v Marshall can be relied upon as justification. This was the position here in relation to Ground 45. Ground 45 and the accompanying skeleton argument made allegations which came within the scope of Paragraph 606 and clearly should have been (and the barristers say it was) seen as engaging the professional responsibility of an advocate to the court. Since the allegations related to matters occurring after trial and judgment, the principle in Ladd v Marshall was inevitably critical to the ability to sustain the allegation. A specific application to admit fresh evidence had to be made. The allegation had to be made on the evidence which Mr Mardell as the appellant was asking the Court of Appeal to admit. If that evidence did not disclose even a prima facie case against Mr Medcalf, it follows that a breach of Paragraph 606 and the advocates' duty to the court occurred.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200102/ldjudgmt/jd020627/medc-3.htm


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