The High Court has ordered a fresh taxation of three disputed items in a bill of costs after finding that the Taxing Master’s assessment was seriously flawed. A different Taxing Master must conduct the new taxation; the court did not set replacement amounts.
The review concerned a €550,000 solicitors’ instructions fee, a €75,000 senior counsel’s brief fee and a €50,000 junior counsel’s fee. These were the amounts allowed by the Taxing Master, from claims of €620,000, €100,000 and €65,000 respectively.
The underlying action arose from a plan to acquire and develop Tolka Park in Drumcondra. The plaintiff, Ivano Cafolla, was a minority shareholder in Coneforth Trading Limited. He sought a declaration that Lyttleton Enterprises Limited held a 99-year leasehold interest, known as the “Donnelly Interest”, in trust for Coneforth. The action did not proceed to trial: following concessions by the defendants, the court made an order for the relief sought and, by consent, ordered costs payable to the plaintiff when taxed and ascertained.
The first three defendants challenged the Taxing Master’s allowances on four grounds, including that the assessment did not adequately examine the work, time and labour involved; gave too much weight to the property’s value; failed to account for a concession of liability; and rejected comparisons with the defendants’ legal costs. The High Court review was governed by section 27(3) of the Courts and Court Officers Act 1995, which permits intervention where an error in an allowance or disallowance makes the decision unjust.
The judge found that the Taxing Master had not adequately assessed the nature and extent of the work or examined the time spent, despite the availability of solicitors’ time records. The report also lacked a sufficiently detailed explanation of how the work justified the amounts allowed. On property value, the judge said the Master could consider the dispute’s importance to the wider development, but should have addressed rival valuations and development costs. The judge also criticised the rejection of comparisons with the defendants’ fees without a reasoned assessment of the differences in work.
The court did not find error in the Master’s treatment of the liability concession. It considered that conclusion rational, while observing that the concession had greater bearing on counsel’s brief fees than on the solicitors’ fee.
Because the court could not determine the proper fees from the material before it, it remitted the disputed items for fresh taxation by a different Taxing Master. It made no independent assessment of the correct amounts.