A law firm that refused to tell a former client whether it earned a commission on his after-the-event insurance policy has won its appeal - not because the refusal was justified, but because the client's lawyers picked the wrong forum to force an answer.
The Court of Appeal ruled on September 21, 2026 that a solicitor-and-own-client costs assessment cannot be used to compel a solicitor to disclose whether they received commissions from ATE insurers. The unanimous decision in Turner v Coupland Cavendish Limited [2026] EWCA Civ 1204 overturns a High Court order and, in the process, declares a key earlier authority wrongly decided.
The underlying facts were small. A personal injury claimant instructed a firm trading as Gowing Law under a conditional fee agreement to pursue a road traffic accident claim. The claim settled for £3,000 in damages. The solicitors' profit costs came in at £7,944 inclusive of VAT - more than twice the damages recovered. The ATE premium was £245.
The claimant's new solicitors, JG Solicitors, launched a statutory assessment of the bill and then served an 18-question request for further information under CPR Part 18, asking among other things whether the firm had received any commission, referral fee or other payment from the ATE insurer. Gowing Law refused to answer. The questions were never formally put before the costs judge, and the request document itself was not included in the hearing bundle.
The costs judge refused to order answers. He noted there was no evidence to support the suspicion that a commission had been paid, and he could not make an order on questions he had not seen. He observed that a practice had grown up of claiming the cash account was "in dispute" as a means of interrogating the circumstances of ATE policies.
On first appeal, the High Court judge reversed that decision, finding that the threshold for a Part 18 request was simply that the information relate to a matter in dispute, and that the solicitor bore the burden of satisfying the court as to the accuracy of the cash account.
The lead judgment held that the High Court judge was wrong on both counts.
The core reasoning turned on what a costs assessment actually covers. A SOCA under section 70 of the Solicitors Act 1974 is concerned with one thing: whether the solicitor's fees were reasonable and reasonably incurred. The cash account - a record of money in and money out - serves a limited function in that process. It tells the costs judge how much the solicitor has already been paid towards the bill, so the judge can certify the final balance. That is an arithmetical exercise, not an investigation.
Items on the cash account that have nothing to do with payment of the bill - including any commission the solicitor may have received from an ATE insurer - fall outside the costs judge's jurisdiction entirely. A dispute about whether a secret commission exists is not a "matter in dispute in the proceedings" for the purposes of CPR Part 18.
The court also found that the earlier decision of Ritchie J in Edwards v Slater and Gordon [2022] EWHC 1091 (QB), which had been treated as authority for the opposite position, was wrongly decided. Two nineteenth-century authorities - Jones v James (1839) and Cooper v Ewart (1847) - established that the costs judge's post-assessment role is limited to working out what has been paid and what remains owing. Neither case, nor the statutory scheme, contemplates a wide-ranging investigation into the cash account.
The judgment was notably candid about the practical consequences. The lead judgment described the solicitors' refusal to answer the commission question as "unattractive" and added that the court might have called it "unwise," noting that a solicitor who has not received a commission could simply say so. The silence, the court observed, reinforces suspicion.
But the judgment was equally blunt about the other side. Citing the Court of Appeal's earlier observation in Belsner v CAM Legal Services [2022] EWCA Civ 1387, it noted the client had no real economic interest in the litigation. Any commission on a £245 ATE premium would likely be no more than about £25. The only beneficiaries of the dispute were those who had "made an industry out of challenging solicitors' costs." The judgment quoted an observation from more than twenty years ago that satellite litigation about costs had become a "growth industry" and a "blot on the civil justice system."
The court acknowledged that a client who suspects undisclosed commissions currently has no easy remedy. Starting fresh proceedings for an account would cost far more than any recoverable commission. The judgment flagged this as a gap that the Rules Committee or Parliament may wish to address, but declined to propose a solution. As matters stand, the alternatives are commencing proceedings for an account or complaining to the Legal Ombudsman.
For ATE insurers and solicitors who arrange ATE cover, the decision draws a firm line. Questions about commissions, referral fees or other payments between solicitors and insurers cannot be forced through the costs assessment process. Any challenge to such arrangements must come through separate proceedings.
For claims professionals watching the satellite litigation space, the decision may slow the volume of costs challenges that use the cash account as a gateway to broader disclosure. But the court's open acknowledgment that the rules leave a gap means the issue is unlikely to disappear.
