The High Court has ordered most defendants in a case concerning the management of a ward’s funds to pay the plaintiffs’ legal costs up to the main judgment, on a joint and several basis. It also ordered the managing partner to pay 65% of the costs of later hearings about the account.
In a costs ruling delivered on 5 August 2022, Ms Justice Baker said the plaintiffs—the ward’s mother and sister, acting as the joint committee of his person and estate—had succeeded in securing an order that an account be furnished. The substantive judgment was delivered on 27 June 2018, followed by a supplemental judgment on 9 June 2020.
The judge said the partnership and its partners had a duty to account for their management of the ward’s court-held fund. The later hearings examined whether an account had already been supplied and whether the documents produced met the court’s order. The account ultimately prepared was detailed and complex, and involved accountants, legal representatives and the court.
The costs order covers legal costs up to the main judgment against all defendants except the seventh, eleventh, and fifteenth to seventeenth defendants. The second defendant’s costs are to be assessed on an undefended basis. The seventh defendant, who had been adjudicated bankrupt and had said he would not contest the order, was excluded from the costs order; no order was made for or against him.
The judge said the costs for this initial stage were joint and several. She limited the costs against some defendants to that stage, including defendants who had retired or had no direct role in managing the fund. She said the partnership’s legal obligations could continue despite a partner’s retirement, while noting that any private indemnity or contribution arrangements between defendants were not before her.
For hearings after the main judgment, the court awarded the plaintiffs 65% of the costs against the first defendant, Pramit Ghose, alone. Those hearings addressed the adequacy of the documentation and account. The judge said the plaintiffs’ expert had wrongly maintained that the accounting obligation had not been met, and that the plaintiffs’ pursuit of further material added time and effort. She also credited Mr Ghose’s work preparing documents and statements with reducing the work required of the plaintiffs’ expert and the court.
The first defendant was separately ordered, as set out in the supplemental judgment, to meet the expenses of engaging experts to examine the books and papers. The costs ruling said the costs were to be adjudicated if the parties could not agree.