The man who owed me £9000.00 eventually offered to pay me in 2 installments (he is a business), and my solicitor accepted on my behalf. The money never arrived so we applied for Court Proceedings. However, my solicitor never applied for the Legal Costs I had so far had to bear, just the Court Costs, £100 legal costs for his work in making the application and 8% interest. The Judgement was made 'In Default' . The Bailiffs went in but were unable to get anything that time as none of the vehicles he had for sale in his yard were registered to him. The Bailiffs went again a week later but no-one was there. My solicitor then finds out that this man has applied to have the Judgement overturned because he said the original Judgement should not have been made as he had submitted a defence. Before the hearing for that, he sent me a cheque for the amount awarded. I informed my solicitor I had the cheque, and banked it. When I informed my solicitor that the cheque had cleared he then stated that the man should have also paid the Bailiffs costs and that he would try and get these awarded to me at the defendants hearing. I did not attend this as I was not made aware that in overturning the original Judgement, it would also act like a complete new hearing and my solicitor had not mentioned the need for me to be there. The outcome was that not only did the Judge overturn the original Judgement but he also lowered the interest rate to 6%. Due to the way this is calculated, it meant that I now owed the defendant more of the interest payment than I was receiving, in fact £160 more, plus the defendant would only have to pay a proportion of the Bailiffs fees - the amount to be negotiated and then settled at the next hearing. I was very unhappy at this outcome and even more so when my own solicitor suggested a figure to ask the defendant to pay towards the Bailiffs fees of less than 50% and I said I would attend the next hearing and make an appeal to the Judge. At this point my solicitor suggested I take over "as any extra monies you might be awarded would be less than my fees". I agreed and asked for his final invoice and, once he had taken that amount from the money I had put on account with his firm, to return the balance to myself. I then have a letter from him stating that he would get an up to date account from the Bailiffs and pay them out of my money, refunding the balance to myself. I have spoken to the Bailiffs and their account is £2,123.06. By the time my solicitor takes his final account also, there will probably be less than £1,000 left to refund. In total it looks like I will end up having paid out £4,000 - £5,000 to get back the debt of £9,000 and surely my solicitor shouldn't take the Bailiffs fees out of my money until it has been decided what the defendants contribution should be by the Judge. Could my solicitor have claimed all MY legal costs instead of just his own £100?
I am extremely stressed by all of this and only sleeping 3 - 4 hrs max. The temptation is to just give up but I feel very strongly that justice is not being done here (and I cannot afford to just give that amount of money away) but I know I need to have the right answers for the next hearing.
Also, I am aware that I have to submit a schedule of costs (?Bailiffs) to the Court at least 14 days before the next hearing - but who do I send/address it to?