My impression is that there has been an increase in recent times of cases presented before our District Court in which claimants have represented themselves, without a lawyer.
A sobering example of the dangers of this course, is the New South Wales Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fan -v- South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (No. 3) [2015] NSWSC 1620.
In this decision by Justice Harrison, the court dealt with the legal costs following failure of Mr Fan’s medical negligence claim. Mr Fan parted company with his lawyers in May 2013, two years before trial. He was “assisted” in presenting his case by his son who it appears was a law student. Trial took 10 days in March and May 2015.
Justice Harrison ordered that Mr Fan pay the health service’s legal costs of the claim in the sum of $250,000. In part this followed the fact the defendant, it was disclosed, had made 3 separate settlement offers over the course of the proceedings, including offers to pay $100,000 and later $250,000 in settlement of Mr Fan’s claim, which offers had been rejected.
This must have added insult to injury for Mr Fan. Not only did he lose his claim, but he did so having rejected such settlement offers from the defence.
As stated earlier, this seems to be a growing trend for plaintiffs, for whatever reason, to seek to present their own cases at trial. Whilst presenting the case in person avoids costs of the plaintiff’s own legal representation, as this case clearly demonstrates, the plaintiff nonetheless still faces the risk of being ordered to pay a very substantial sum to the defendant if the claim does not succeed.
Note as a measure of the costs expended, the $250,000 is actually slightly less than 1/2 the total legal costs incurred by the defendant in relation to the case which was stated as $512,250.83…