In the matter of Mott & Anor v Long & Anor [2017] EWHC 2130 (TCC) the Defendant’s solicitors obtained relief from sanctions after filing their costs budget 10 days late. The decision, which will inevitably draw comparison with the decision in Jagdish Lakhani v Ibrahim Sheikh Abadullah Mahmud [2017] EWHC 1713, which was referred to in the hearing and decided only a few weeks before, where relief was refused when a costs budget was served a single day after the deadline.  

In his judgment, His Honour Judge Grant, sitting as a High Court Judge, noted that because of the individual circumstances of the case, the costs budgeting exercise would not have been completed in any event and the parties were in no different position to that which they would have found themselves had the budget been served on time. HHJ Grant considered this factor highly significant when considering the third limb of the Denton Test, “all the circumstances of the case” and granted the relief sought.