A businessman suing a leading legal firm and an advocate after being charged millions of pounds in fees has received a payment to settle his case.
Oil tycoon Robert Kidd took Levy & McRae and advocate Jonathan Brown to court in 2018 over their charges of around £6 million. The fees were declared illegal by a judge last year. Aberdeen-based Kidd sued for £3m and the case has now been settled with an out-of-court payment.
Jim Diamond, an expert in legal costs, hired by Kidd to work on the case, previously described the fees charged as the worst-case of over-billing he had seen in 35 years. Diamond said: “Mr Kidd is satisfied that the matter has now settled.”
Details of the settlement have not been disclosed. Levy & McRae and Brown had originally been hired by Kidd in 2015 in a claim against a firm of Edinburgh solicitors who had acted for him in the sale of his share of an Aberdeen-based oil services company, ITS Tubular Solutions, to a US private equity firm.
Kidd claims he suffered financial losses as a result of advice they gave him. A £19m settlement figure was paid to the Glasgow firm, which passed it on to Kidd minus its bill, which included £3m of “success fees” for winning the case. Kidd and his firm A&E Investments then launched a legal action at the Court of Session in Edinburgh against Levy & McRae, claiming it should not have charged him the success fees.
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