BVI: Court of Appeal confirms foreign lawyer fees are unrecoverable

John Shrimpton et al v. Dominic Scriven et al, BVIHCMAP2016/0031

Summary

The Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (the ‘Court’) has upheld a recent ruling that the common law right to claim the fees of foreign lawyers as a disbursement of BVI counsel was abrogated by s. 18(3) of the Legal Profession Act 2015 (‘LPA’). As a consequence, the current position is that the fees of foreign lawyers are no longer recoverable in proceedings conducted in the BVI, regardless of whether the foreign lawyer’s activities were ‘reasonable and necessary’ for a foreign lawyer to carry out in relation to the BVI case.

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