The High Court has set out how legal costs are to be divided in connected proceedings over waste at a site requiring remediation, following earlier judgments on responsibility and the work to be carried out.
In a judgment delivered on 21 December 2011, Mr Justice Clarke said the substantive issues had already been determined. This judgment addressed costs across three proceedings: cases brought by John Ronan and Sons and South Dublin County Council under waste legislation, and the Council’s separate claim to recover remediation expenses.
The court treated the Ronan and Council proceedings as one set of cases for costs from the time the Council’s proceedings began. It ordered Laurence Mullin and James Redmond to pay, jointly and severally, Ronan’s costs up to that point. For the later costs, 25% was ordered jointly and severally against Mullin, John Charles Farrell, Redmond and Liam O’Rua. The remaining 75% is to be divided according to responsibility shares fixed in the principal judgment.
The judge said the 25% allocation reflected time spent on disputes between the individual respondents about how responsibility for the waste should be divided. He set further arrangements for contributions between them if one had to pay more than their share. Gary Roe, who had been absolved of liability in the principal judgment, was awarded costs against Ronan and the Council, limited to additional costs reasonably incurred in defending the case against him. The two parties are to bear those costs equally in principle, with an adjustment if either pays more than half.
The Council received no costs order for or against it in the main proceedings. The judge assessed its successes and losses on responsibility, remediation and other issues as broadly equivalent, taking account of the overlap with Ronan’s case and the Council’s more expensive initial remediation proposal. Ronan’s revised proposal was ultimately accepted, with the judge describing Ronan as materially, though not totally, successful on remediation.
In the separate summary proceedings, the court had entered judgment against O’Rua for €6,336.50, which the judgment described as 5% of the Council’s total remediation expenditure. The balance of the Council’s claim against Ronan was remitted to a plenary hearing, and the case against Roe was dismissed. The Council was awarded only the costs that would have been incurred to obtain an unopposed District Court judgment for the €6,336.50.
The judgment concerns costs and records the limits of the earlier substantive decisions; it does not determine the Council’s remaining claim against Ronan.