Surgical mesh: Hanison acted for 305 women
A solicitor struck off for failing hundreds of women in vaginal mesh claims has been told to return £92,000 in interim costs payments he received from the NHS.
Costs Judge Joseph also ordered Darren Hanison to pay the costs of the detailed assessments of six linked cases on the indemnity basis because he had “abandoned” both his clients and the proceedings.
Mr Hanison was struck off earlier this year after he either admitted to or was found guilty of 17 allegations of professional misconduct, several involving dishonesty, which the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said were “at the very highest level of seriousness”.
He had practised from Fortitude Law, of Haywards Heath in Sussex, which the Solicitors Regulation Authority shut in May 2023.
Before then, Mr Hanison had notified NHS Resolution of 305 claims and issued letters of claim in around 100 of them. Of those, 58 were settled, with the NHS agreeing to pay damages and reasonable legal costs.
Mr Hanison commenced detailed assessment proceedings. Following a hearing on various preliminary issues shortly before the intervention, Costs Judge James slashed various items and criticised Fortitude’s approach to the litigation.
Judge Joseph recorded that nothing had happened on the costs claims since, while none of the other claimants Mr Hanison represented had commenced detailed assessment proceedings either.
On the defendants’ application, he accepted that Mr Hanison had terminated his retainers with the six claimants without good reason as a result of the intervention and strike-off.
“In short, Mr Hanison has abandoned the claimants in the six linked claims and their costs proceedings,” he said.
Further, the retainers were now unenforceable, meaning the claims had to be struck out.
Judge Joseph said the claims also fell to be struck out for a “serious” abuse of process due to the delay in progressing them.
As a result, he ordered Mr Hansion to return the £92,000 in interim costs he had been paid by NHS Resolution, while any other clients were given 28 days to commence detailed assessment proceedings, failing which all of the costs to which they would otherwise be entitled would be disallowed.
He added that he shared the “very considerable concerns” Judge James had expressed and ruled that Mr Hanison should pay the costs of the proceedings on the indemnity basis.
“The various significant and substantial reductions in those parts of the bill which were assessed by Costs Judge James indicate an attempt to claim very much more than could ever have been allowed on a standard basis assessment.
“As Mr Hanison has not responded to the defendants’ allegations in this respect, I have to proceed with there being no explanation at all as to why and on what basis such high amounts were claimed.
“The making of a claim for costs, and the signing of a bill of costs which makes very high and unsustainable claims for costs, is itself unreasonable.
“On that basis, Mr Hanison’s unreasonable behaviour started at the very outset of the detailed assessment proceedings by the signing of the bills.”
Judge Joseph said that, in response to a concern he had raised, the defendants had given an undertaking not to pursue the claimants for their costs of the detailed assessment proceedings.
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