A complaint about a claim against an employer in June 2013, which was brought to the Legal Ombudsman in October 2017 and was therefore within the six year time limit.
On 1 April 2023 we changed the time limits for referring a complaint to us in our Scheme Rules. This case study applies to complaints referred to the Legal Ombudsman before this date.
Mr T lost a claim against his employer in June 2016.
On the same date Mr T received the final bill from the firm who’d represented him. However, Mr T claimed he’d been charged the wrong hourly rate and the bill was more than the estimated costs in the client care letter.
Mr T complained to the firm but did not receive a response, so in October 2020 he brought his complaint to us.
We concluded that Mr T’s complaints were in time.
Our Scheme Rules for cases brought to us before 1 April 2023 said we could look at complaints if they are referred to us:
- within six years of the problem happening; or- within three years from when you found out about it;
and- You refer your complaint to us within six months of your service provider’s final response, if they warn you about this appropriately.
In this instance the problem occurred in June 2016 as this is when Mr T received the bill. As Mr T referred his complaint to us four years later, he had done so within our time limit of six years.
As Mr T had met the time limit in the first part of this rule, we did not need to consider whether Mr T had referred his complaint to us within three years of when he found out there was an issue.
The firm did not respond to Mr T’s complaint, so the six-month time limit was not applicable. For these reasons we were able to continue with an investigation into Mr T’s complaints.
