The High Court has ordered Brigid Hughes to pay the costs of two intended defendants after she withdrew an application to join them to an admiralty action arising from the death of a crew member who fell overboard from the fishing vessel Kerri Heather in 2016.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons made the costs order on 26 July 2022. The joinder motion was withdrawn after it had been part-heard, so the court did not formally adjudicate it. The order concerns the costs of that motion, not the outcome of the underlying action.
The action names the owners and all persons claiming an interest in the vessel as defendants. The judgment says the plenary summons identified the then owner as John O’Connor. He entered an appearance and delivered a defence, pleading, among other things, that he was not the vessel’s operator at the time of the accident. O’Connor died in June 2019.
Hughes’s application, issued in April 2021, sought to add O’Connor’s two adult children. Her grounding affidavit said ownership had been transferred to a family partnership and passed to the children by survivorship. The judge noted there was no suggestion they owned or operated the vessel at the time of the accident, or had any involvement in its operation. The judgment says the vessel appeared to have been chartered to a third party at the time.
At the June 2022 hearing, the judge questioned the legal basis for joining the children. He said the claim appeared to be directed against the vessel’s owner at the time of the accident, who had appeared and defended the case. The children, as later owners with an interest in the vessel, could participate if they wished, but the judge said they would not have personal liability on the facts presented. They had indicated they were prepared to transfer ownership of the vessel to Hughes without payment and estimated its value at about €15,000.
The judge adjourned the motion to allow written submissions on the basis for joinder. None were filed. When the matter returned on 25 July, Hughes’s counsel said the application would not be pursued.
In awarding costs, the judge said the children had been put to the time and trouble of resisting an application that appeared, at first sight, to lack a foundation and had since been withdrawn. He found Hughes’s conduct in pursuing it to a hearing unreasonable. Her impecunious position, raised by her counsel, was not a reason by itself to depart from the ordinary costs rules.
The children were awarded the costs of the motion, to be assessed under Part 10 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 if the parties cannot agree. The order was not stayed. The underlying action remained ongoing, with directions listed remotely for 6 October 2022.