A judge has overturned a lower court ruling that sought to curtail deductions for legal expenses from a young child’s personal injury settlement, warning against judicial overreach into the economics of no-win, no-fee litigation.
In Duffield v WM Morrison Supermarkets Ltd, His Honour Judge Monty KC, sitting at the Central London County Court, allowed a mother to recover both a £450 legal success fee and a £675 after-the-event (ATE) insurance premium from her son’s damages award - expenses previously disallowed by a district judge as disproportionate.
The case centred on a claim brought by Ms Sandra Matuleviciute on behalf of her five-year-old son, Brendan Duffield, who was injured in a Morrisons supermarket in April 2022. The child sustained injury when a cabinet toppled onto his foot. Liability was contested, but the parties settled in 2023 for £2,250 in damages.
The litigation was funded under a conditional fee agreement (CFA), commonly known as a no-win, no-fee arrangement, with a 100% success uplift and ATE insurance to cover the risk of adverse costs. Ms Matuleviciute, represented by Express Solicitors, applied to deduct £1,125 (50% of the damages) to cover these expenses.
At a settlement approval hearing in October 2024, Deputy District Judge Walton approved the damages but refused to allow the ATE premium and capped the success fee at £225, citing concerns over proportionality and the perceived low risk of adverse costs under the Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting (QOCS) regime.
On appeal, Judge Monty sharply criticised the lower court’s reasoning. He found that the district judge had conflated legal costs with damages, mistakenly applying a 10% cap based on Simmons v Castle, a case dealing with judicially increased damages for pain and suffering, not solicitor remuneration.
“The Simmons uplift has nothing to do with the contractual recovery of a success fee,” Judge Monty wrote. “It was not open to the judge to determine the amount of the deductible success fee by reference to a Simmons 10% uplift on damages.”
As to the disallowed insurance premium, the appeal judge invoked the Court of Appeal’s binding ruling in West v Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, which held that the reasonableness of ATE premiums must be assessed on a systemic, not case-by-case, basis. He found that the deputy district judge had erred in principle by concluding that the premium had not been reasonably incurred.
“The court below failed properly to apply CPR 21.12 and CPR 46.9,” the judgment said. “There was an inherent contradiction in allowing the success fee—thereby acknowledging litigation risk—while denying the ATE premium intended to guard against that very risk.”
The court noted that QOCS protections do not eliminate the risk of financial liability for unsuccessful claims, especially in relation to disbursements and failed settlement negotiations. Ms Matuleviciute’s informed decision to insure was therefore deemed entirely reasonable.
Judge Monty reinstated the full deductions, ordering the Court Funds Office to release £900 (£675 for the insurance premium and a further £225 to complete the success fee) to the claimant’s solicitors.
The judgment is expected to resonate across the personal injury sector, particularly in cases involving child claimants, where courts are increasingly called upon to scrutinise legal funding arrangements. Practitioners welcomed the decision as a reaffirmation of legal certainty in CFA-backed litigation.
Case: Duffield v WM Morrison Supermarkets Ltd [2025] EWCC 35
Court: County Court at Central London
Judge (appeal): HHJ Monty KC
Judge (first instance): Deputy District Judge Walton
Claimant (by litigation friend): Master Brendan Duffield, represented by Ms Sandra Matuleviciute
Solicitors: Express Solicitors
Counsel for the Appellant: Ms Nyssa Crorie
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