The High Court has awarded costs to a son who won a dispute over ownership of half a farm, ruling that his unsuccessful forgery allegation did not justify reducing his costs. The court also refused the defendants’ request to add declarations about a deed of release to the final order.
Mr Justice Twomey gave the ruling on 20 July 2023 in a costs application following an earlier judgment in Egan v Egan. The earlier decision held that Mr Egan Junior owned the half share because the release purporting to give it to his father had no legal effect. The court had found that the son’s signature on the document was not forged.
The defendants, who represented the estate of Mr Egan Senior, argued that there should be no order as to costs because they had succeeded on the forgery point. The judge said the ownership question was the only dispute that mattered and the plaintiff had won it. Forgery had been pleaded as one of several grounds for challenging the release, but the plaintiff’s counsel gave little or no weight to that allegation at trial. The plaintiff’s own handwriting expert’s evidence supported the conclusion that the signature was his.
The court stressed that its finding on the signature did not resolve how it came to appear on the release. The document was undated, unwitnessed, unsealed and unstamped, and appeared on a solicitor’s file. The judge said it was unnecessary to determine whether the son had signed a blank document or signed without understanding its effect. The release did not receive a “clean bill of health”, but the court made no finding about how it came into existence.
At the costs hearing, the defendants sought declarations that the release had not been executed by Mr Egan Senior and that the son’s signature was not forged. The judge rejected the application because neither party had sought those declarations in the pleadings and there was no basis to insert them into the final order without the plaintiff’s consent.
The court concluded that the plaintiff was entirely successful for the purposes of section 169(1) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 and awarded him his costs. The costs hearing lasted more than two hours, after a substantive hearing of two and a half days. The judge said a broad approach to costs could have avoided further expense and use of court time.