Legal costs in the mammoth ‘Pan-NOX’ group litigation over ‘Dieselgate’ are expected to total some £715 million, the High Court heard this week. Senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker and Mr Justice Constable were presiding over a three-day costs management hearing in Various Claimants v Mercedes-Benz Group and Others, part of the administrative run-up to the largest claim in English legal history.
Court 8 in the Rolls Building – packed by some 15 legal teams – heard strong disagreements between the claimants and defendants over the size and composition of their respective budgets, drawn up following a costs management order last year. The legal bill for the three-day costs hearing alone is £3.65m, the court heard.
The £395.6m budget submitted by lead claimant firms Pogust Goodhead and Leigh Day is described as ‘eye-watering’ in the defendants’ skeleton argument. The assumptions underpinning it are ‘vague, boilerplate and unreliable’ it states, alleging that the figure is ‘matched, it seems, by the ambitions of some of their lawyers with respect of their own remuneration’.
While the claimants should be able to achieve economies of scale, the defendants, competing businesses, all require separate teams, the document states.
In their submission, the claimants accuse the defendants of ‘tactical games’ in setting a deliberately underestimated budget of £321m. ‘The intention behind the defendants’ approach is obvious. The defendants do not want the court or the claimants to know the full extent of the costs that they have incurred, or will incur in future, because the “true” costs would be so much higher that it would make it far more difficult for them to criticise or seek to reduce the claimants’ budgets.’
The judge was reminded today that claimants will be unable to ignore ‘avalanche of emails’ inevitably generated in the so-called ‘bundle Q’ of inter-lawyer correspondence.
‘Just because that happens doesn’t mean it should be sanctioned by means of costs,’ Mr Justice Constble observed. He urged counsel to keep their submissions to a minimum, noting at one stage that ‘in some senior European courts parties have only 10 minutes for their entire case’.
The hearing continues.
The full trial in the claim against Mercedes, Peugeot Citroën, Ford and Renault Nissan is to begin in October 2025.