High Court orders Legal Ombudsman to reconsider costs ruling after finding a material factual error
The High Court has partially overturned a decision of the Legal Ombudsman after finding that a material factual error affected its ruling in a dispute between a barrister and a former client.
In a judgment handed down on 14 January 2026, the High Court of Justice ruled that elements of the Ombudsman’s final decision against barrister Md Abu Sufian were flawed and must be reconsidered. The case was heard in the Administrative Court of the King’s Bench Division and decided by Marcus Pilgerstorfer KC.
The dispute arose from a complaint made by a former immigration client, referred to as Client N, concerning fees charged by Mr Sufian for legal work carried out between 2016 and 2020. The Legal Ombudsman had upheld parts of the complaint, finding unreasonable service in relation to costs information, backdating of a client care letter, and delay in informing the client about a Court of Appeal costs award. A remedy was imposed requiring Mr Sufian to refund £4,911.50 and waive outstanding fees totalling £17,387.
Mr Sufian challenged both the Ombudsman’s final decision of August 2023 and a subsequent decision allowing the client to accept that ruling out of time. He argued the Ombudsman acted unfairly, exceeded its jurisdiction, and made findings unsupported by the evidence.
The Court rejected the majority of those arguments. It held that the Ombudsman acted within its statutory remit, followed its own Scheme Rules, and complied with minimum standards of procedural fairness. The Court also dismissed the challenge to the decision permitting late acceptance of the ruling, finding that the Ombudsman had rationally concluded there were sufficient reasons for the delay.
However, the Court identified a decisive factual error in the Ombudsman’s reasoning. It found that the Ombudsman had wrongly concluded that a key client care letter dated 8 September 2018 contained no fee information. In fact, the full document provided by Mr Sufian clearly stated a fixed fee of £7,500 for urgent judicial review work.
The Court ruled that this mistake materially affected both the finding of unreasonable service and the calculation of the remedy. It held that the error influenced the Ombudsman’s assessment of what the client reasonably expected to pay and, in turn, the scale of the refund imposed.
As a result, the Court quashed the Ombudsman’s findings on costs information and the remedy, and directed that those matters be reconsidered. The remainder of the Ombudsman’s decision, including the rejection of the complaint that Mr Sufian improperly retained court-awarded costs, was left undisturbed.