R v Munemo
[2023] EWHC 1636 (SCCO)
R v Mohammed Ikhlaq
19 December 2023
[2023] EWHC 3279 (SCCO)
Senior Courts Costs Office
Lawyers appealed a bill for their work on a money laundering case. A dispute arose over how many pages of digital evidence should be counted. The judge agreed that some of the digital evidence count was too low because a lot of pictures were relevant, leading to an increased payment to the lawyers.
Key Facts
- •Appeal by Harewood Law solicitors against the determining officer's calculation of litigator's fee under the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013.
- •Dispute over the number of pages of prosecution evidence (PPE) to be considered: 4,680 pages used by the determining officer vs. 10,000 pages claimed by the solicitors.
- •Case involved Mohammed Ikhlaq, prosecuted for money laundering.
- •Prosecution evidence included a telephone download (exhibit CH/1) in UFED format, later converted to PDF.
- •Solicitors used the UFED version for case preparation, while the determining officer used the PDF version for PPE calculation.
- •Dispute over the relevance and inclusion of various parts of the telephone download (images, technical metadata, etc.).
- •The determining officer allowed 5% of images based on the case R v Sereika (2018).
Legal Principles
In calculating PPE for electronic evidence, the PDF version is preferred, even if another format is more user-friendly for case preparation.
Numerous costs judge decisions
Determining officers must impose a threshold of importance for electronic PPE to ensure it requires the same level of concentration as paper PPE; otherwise, a claim for special preparation can be made.
SVS case and 2013 Regulations
Determining officers have discretion to allow parts of electronic downloads as PPE based on relevance, excluding irrelevant parts like technical metadata.
2013 Regulations and case law
In assessing relevance of images in PPE, a broad approach can be taken, acknowledging that only a proportion might be truly relevant (R v Sereika approach)
R v Sereika (2018)
Outcomes
Appeal partially successful.
The determining officer's use of the PDF version for PPE calculation was not flawed, but the 5% allowance for images was deemed insufficient given their relevance to the defence case.
Determining officer directed to recalculate the fee using 6,000 pages instead of 4,680 pages.
The court found that approximately 30% of the images should be considered PPE due to their relevance to the defence.
Solicitors awarded costs of the appeal.
The appeal was partially successful.