A defence barrister who worked on a complex drugs case has won an appeal for extra payment, after the legal aid determining officer did not consider the worklog she supplied to support her claim.
In R v Danson, Sarah Vine KC, of Doughty Street Chambers, claimed 386 hours for special preparation of a case in which she represented a defendant charged with conspiring to transfer prohibited weapons and to supply class A drugs. The legal aid’s determining officer allowed 236 hours.
Vine said the allegations were ‘relatively straightforward’ but the evidential matrix was ’very large, complex and unwieldy’. The case involved multiple defendants.
The barrister was instructed for the second trial, after the first collapsed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The second trial was halted because it was overrunning. A third trial ended with the jury being discharged after six months because they could not reach verdicts.
Costs judge Leonard said he accepted ‘most or all’ of Vine’s submissions. Though special preparation claims are not based on a time unit page, Vine’s claim was ‘just over’ one minute per page which ‘does not seem unreasonable’, he said.
Allowing the appeal, the judge said the determining officer was ‘mistaken in declining to consider the worklog’ Vine produced in support of her claim. He described the worklog as a ‘careful record of exactly what evidence was being considered on a day by day basis’ and offered ‘firm support’ of Vine’s claim.
The judge ordered that the appropriate additional payment, to which costs of £450 and the £100 paid on appeal should be made to Vine.
