This claim arose from a road traffic accident that occurred on the 14th November 2002. The case was settled on the 16th May 2006 for £50,000.00. The breakdown of that settlement was £35,000.00 general damages and £15,000.00 in respect of a Smith –v- Manchester Corporation head of special damages. Costs were agreed apart from one item of the Plaintiff’s Solicitors outlay. This was their Forensic Accountancy fee in the amount of £3,250.00 plus VAT.
The Plaintiff was 17 years of age when this accident occurred and sustained a significant knee injury. It was part of his claim that because of this knee injury he had been precluded from a career with the PSNI. His Accountants had prepared a report on the possible future loss that the Plaintiff had sustained. This report postulated three scenarios and calculated different level of potential future loss as a result of each of these scenarios. These scenarios envisaged the Plaintiff joining the PSNI at different ages or achieving different ranks. Scenario A projected a loss of £653,000.00, scenario B a loss of £484,000.00 and scenario C a loss of £193,000.00. Scenario C envisaged a career outside of the PSNI in a job described as with a skill level 1.
Through the discovery process however we were able to ascertain that the Plaintiff had made three applications to the Police for employment. On the first occasion in 2004 his application arrived two days after the closing date for applications and was rejected for this reason. On the second occasion the Plaintiff applied to the PSNI he was asked to attend for an aptitude test. He scored 46 out of 100 while the pass mark was 47. Therefore his application was not processed any further. His third application met with a similar result albeit with a slightly higher pass mark but with the same unsuccesful result. Therefore essentially the Plaintiff did not reach a stage of the application process where his knee injury in anyway hindered his application to join the PSNI.
In the taxation we relied upon the discovery of the application process with the PSNI to undermine scenarios A and B of Goldblatt McGuigan. It transpired that the Plaintiff’s first and second applications to the PSNI were turned down before his Solicitors instructed the firm of Accountants to report.
We also submitted to the Taxing Master that there was no medical basis to justify the third scenario presented by the Accountants. For this reason we submitted that the entirety of the Accountant’s fee should be disallowed.
At the invitation of the Taxing Master further submissions were made in September 2009 and Judgement was delivered on the 5th May 2010 in which the entirety of the Accountant’s fee was disallowed. In so doing the Taxing Master stated
“I am satisfied that at the least, there is a significant doubt over the reasonableness of the decision of the Plaintiff’s advisers in this case to commission the Accountant’s report at the time it was commissioned. This being so, on the standard basis of taxation, this doubt is to be resolved in favour of the paying party. Accordingly I have decided to disallow the Accountant’s fees”.