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David Ellis

The High Court case of Jones v Longley (2015) highlights the fact that litigants in person are not subject to any special rules and are liable to have costs orders made against them in exactly the same way as legally represented parties.

The claimant and first defendant were executors of a will.  The claimant was a solicitor and the first defendant was the son of the deceased who acted as a litigant in person.  He two had disagreed on a number of matters.  The claimant made an application to the court to remove the first defendant as co-executor.  The court, instead, made an order removing the claimant.

Despite ordering that the claimant be removed as executor, the judge ordered that the claimant’s costs be paid by the first defendant.  The judge held that the claimant was acting in the best interests of the estate in bringing the claim, and that the first defendant did not act reasonably in the way that he defended the matter.

The first defendant argued that he had conducted the litigation reasonably and proportionately, having responded to the claim in a measured and restrained way.  The judge did not agree.  He referred to the first defendant’s approach to the litigation as including making “pedantic and unreasonable” demands for information, the use of “prolix, quasi-scientific and repetitive language” and reliance upon “voluminous written materials, most of which are of marginal relevance at best”. 

The judge went on: “Of course, I accept that the first defendant is not a lawyer, but he is clearly an intelligent and articulate man, and in any event there are not two sets of rules, one for lawyers and one for laymen. If you embark on litigation without a lawyer, you cannot expect to be judged by rules different from those which apply to litigants legally represented.”