The High Court has set out how costs are to be divided in a road accident claim in which the defendant accepted liability. In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 12 February 2025, Mr Justice Tony O’Connor ordered Patrick Simons to pay Zsolt Rezmuves €13,262.50 in damages, but also ordered Rezmuves to pay Simons’s costs from 28 July 2022 through the final trial day, with a specified exclusion.
The ruling concerns costs in proceedings arising from the third of three collisions, which occurred on 10 March 2017. A judgment delivered in October 2024 awarded €53,050 for injuries across the three accidents. The defendants had agreed that the court need not apportion liability among them. The court said the overall damages award did not exceed the Circuit Court’s jurisdiction.
Simons made a €30,555 tender on 13 March 2019. On the day after the trial began, his solicitors made a second tender of €50,001. Rezmuves began the trial himself, without legal representation, on 29 November 2022. The judge found that the damages awarded did not exceed the first tender. Under the applicable court rule, Simons was entitled to costs from the date of that offer.
The court found no special cause to depart from that rule because the three proceedings were heard together. It said that approach had been sought by Rezmuves’s previous counsel and that the defendants’ rights to litigate damages in their respective cases had been preserved. The court nevertheless found it reasonable to bring the claim in the Circuit Court and directed Simons to pay Rezmuves’s costs and outlays, including a senior counsel certificate, up to and including 10 April 2019. Those costs are to be assessed on the Circuit Court scale if the parties cannot agree.
The judge ordered Rezmuves to pay Simons’s costs from 28 July 2022, when the case was assigned a trial date after Rezmuves had discharged his solicitors, through 30 July 2024, the last day of trial. The order excludes costs of written and oral submissions on a statutory application under section 26. The court said there was merit in bringing that application, which concerned a late claim for loss of earnings that was rejected in the main judgment.
There is no costs order for 11 April 2019 to 27 July 2022 or for the costs hearing. All costs are to be agreed or adjudicated. The €13,262.50 is not payable until costs are resolved, and Simons may offset the damages and costs owed to Rezmuves against the costs awarded to him.