The customer is always right

One could be forgiven, faced with the daily office pressures of hitting chargeable targets, completing administrative tasks, collecting CPD points, writing articles and enthusiastically participating in marketing, for occasionally losing sight of the fact that we exist to service our end users.

Is the client always right, however? There have been a number of occasions during my career to date where I harboured serious doubts. Sometimes I wish to receive instructions from a client to pursue a particular path, but am instead asked to proceed differently.

One recent example arose when my firm received, with no prior notice, an unless order requiring us to commence detailed assessment proceedings by a particular date or lose the right to recover any of our costs in a discontinued claim. To put this into context, we had received no indication from the claimants' solicitors that they intended to make an application.

Email warning (not received)

On challenging them about this, I was told that an email had been sent to me personally warning that they would apply to the court if we did not respond to their clients' offer on our costs, and a copy of the email was provided. I have a good memory for detail, and did not recall having seen it before.

I trawled through my inbox and deleted items in addition to the paper file before contacting my IT department. They ran a server report confirming that not only had I not received the email, but my firm had received no emails from the claimants' solicitors on that date.

I therefore confronted the claimants' solicitors again, armed with this information. I was met with a dismissal of the email as "irrelevant" and a suggestion that I drop the point. They obviously don't know me very well.

Witness statement (from me)

We had to issue an urgent application to set aside the unless order supported by a witness statement from me. I thus clearly had to ensure that my facts were entirely accurate in stating that we had received no notice of the intended application from the claimants' solicitors. On continuing to press the point, we eventually obtained a written concession that according to the claimants' solicitors' own server report, the e-mail had not in fact been sent. What a palaver.

The claimants' solicitors initially offered, following our application, to agree to the unless order being set aside if we paid their costs of the application, which were astronomically high. When we politely declined they offered to drop hands, with both parties bearing their own costs of the respective applications. This presented a conundrum because commercially speaking, that would obviously be less expensive than going ahead with a hearing, although there was the potential for that to result in us recovering substantial costs from the claimants' solicitors.

Dropping the ball

I presented both options to my client from a costs benefit angle. Unsurprisingly, I received instructions to accept the drop hands offer. It continues to rankle, however, as I would very much like to have heard what the claimants' solicitors had to say to the court about the phantom, and far from irrelevant, email.

Our client's decision was no doubt numbers-driven, as in the real world these matters so often are. Taking points of principle can prove an expensive luxury. Clients will of course face their own internal pressures at work. For example, claims handlers will have limits on their authority beyond which decisions are escalated to the powers that be within their companies.

They will also be required to explain any perceived overspend on costs, which would include a decision to take a point to a court hearing when it could have been walked away from a month earlier.

My message for this month is twofold. Most people are under daily pressure at work, save perhaps those in dream jobs such as Sunday Times travel writers and Jeremy Clarkson, and the customer is always right. Even when they're wrong.

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