The Supreme Court proposed replacing an assessment of about €86,000 in costs against environmental litigant Volkmar Klohn with €1,250, applying the European Union’s not prohibitively expensive standard.
In a judgment delivered on 3 August 2021, Chief Justice Clarke said the parties agreed that the Taxing Master’s assessment could not meet that standard and had to be overturned. The court chose to measure the costs itself, rather than return the matter for a fresh assessment, after both sides agreed to that course.
The underlying environmental proceedings had been lost by Mr Klohn, and the High Court had ordered him to pay the Board’s costs. This appeal concerned the later assessment of the amount payable under that order. The Supreme Court said the assessment had to take account of the overall burden of the proceedings, including the costs Mr Klohn had paid for his own lawyers, which were about €32,000.
The judgment referred to an affidavit in which Mr Klohn described himself as a small-scale organic horticultural grower of ordinary means and exhibited a medical card and a land certificate. The court was told he was now retired. It concluded that, in light of his circumstances and his own legal costs, only a very modest sum should be assessed against him. It set that sum at €1,250, while noting that the Board would be left without almost all of the approximately €86,000 it had spent defending the underlying case.
The court did not order the Board to contribute to Mr Klohn’s own legal costs. It held that the original costs order against him had become final because it was not appealed, so that issue was res judicata and could not be reopened in this taxation review. Nor did the court consider a possible damages claim: it said no such claim had been brought before a trial court and was not part of the appeal before it.
The judgment also proposed awarding Mr Klohn the full costs of the appeal, including costs relating to representation and the two references to the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as the costs of the High Court review. The court said the Board should be liable for those costs.
The document is a judgment setting out the Chief Justice’s proposals. Its conclusion says the court should allow the appeal, substitute €1,250 for the Taxing Master’s assessment and award the appeal costs; it does not record a separate final order in the supplied text.