Lawyers settle £6m battle with oil boss

Abusinessman 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 Mr Kidd sued for £3m and the case has now been settled with an out-of-court payment.

Jim Diamond, an expert in legal costs, who was hired by Mr Kidd to work on the case, previously described the fees charged as the worst-case of overbilling he had seen in 35 years. Mr Diamond said last week: “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 Mr 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.

Mr Kidd claimed 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 Mr Kidd minus its bill, which included £3m of “success fees” for winning the case.

Mr 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 on top of its basic bill.

In a judgment last year, Lord Doherty said the fees were “illegal and unenforceable”.

The £6m sum included a basic fee to Levy & McRae of £2.1m plus a success fee of £1.89m. Jonathan Brown was paid £1.1m plus a success fee of £990,000.

Previously, Diamond said: “My work on behalf of Mr Kidd involved going through Levy & McRae’s working papers to produce a detailed audit report of the charging and/or billing irregularities.

“On production of my audit report I found it to be the worst case I have come across in 35 years in this industry of billing overcharges and/or irregularities. Even trying to get a detailed breakdown of the time spent on the matter by both Levy & McRae and Mr Brown required an order from a judge.”

Neither side would comment because of confidentiality agreements.

TYCOON: Robert Kidd sued over his legal fees.