08.10.2024
On Friday afternoon the Court handed down the judgment dealing with consequential matters in Gorbachev v Guriev, one of the Lawyer Top 20 Cases, in which PCB Byrne struck victory for its client, Andrey Guriev.
HHJ Pelling KC ruled that the unsuccessful Claimant, Mr Gorbachev, must pay Mr Guriev’s costs of the proceedings to be assessed on the indemnity basis and that the amount of an interim payment should be GBP 12 million. The Judge also ordered that the Claimant should disclose the identity of all those parties who had funded his claim. Amongst other things, the Judge held that Mr Gorbachev’s case was “inherently a weak (and in reality a dishonestly false) case and that his claim “is one that ought not to have been commenced….”.
The Judge also rejected the submission made by the Claimant’s Counsel that Mr Gorbachev should not have to bear the costs of and occasioned by the adjournment or the increased costs incurred by the defendant as a result of having to move law firms following Mr Guriev’s designation and that the purpose of imposing sanctions was to make life economically difficult for those who are sanctioned stating: “I reject this submission without hesitation, at any rate in relation to the conduct of litigation. Sanctions prevent expenditure without a licence. Both a general licence and, when granted, specific licences permit expenditure on legal costs. There is nothing in the sanction regime that precludes a sanctioned individual from recovering his or part of his otherwise properly recoverable costs of litigation to which he was party… This claim is one that ought not to have been commenced. It is a claim that ought to have been critically reviewed at various stages and the point at which the defendant became a sanctioned individual was one of them.”
The link to the judgment can be found HERE.
NEIL MICKLETHWAITE AND OLGA BISCHOF LED THE TEAM AT PCB BYRNE INSTRUCTING HELEN DAVIES KC OF BRICK COURT CHAMBERS, TOGETHER WITH TOM WEISSELBERG KC, DANIEL CASHMAN AND ROWAN STENNETT OF BLACKSTONE CHAMBERS.
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