The High Court has ruled on costs across 16 stages of Y.Y.’s judicial review challenge to deportation and successive decisions by the Minister for Justice and Equality. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the ruling on 7 May 2019.
The judgment did not revisit the underlying immigration decisions. It allocated costs arising from the proceedings to date, following an approach agreed by the parties. The judge said the case had involved 13 High Court judgment numberings and 15 rulings overall when Supreme Court decisions were included.
The applicant was awarded costs for the pre-leave stage and several later modules, including applications for leave to appeal, a stay pending appeal, amendments, challenges to second and third decisions under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999, and a hearing after the court found a problem in principle with the fourth such decision. The parties had agreed the applicant should receive costs in a number of those modules.
There was no order as to costs for the first, nine-day module, which challenged both the deportation order and the first section 3(11) decision. The judge treated those two parts as roughly equal in cost. The applicant had ultimately succeeded in the Supreme Court on the adequacy of reasons for the section 3(11) decision, but failed on the challenge to the deportation order and on most other grounds. The judge said the net result for that module should be no order as to costs.
The respondent was awarded costs for the module challenging the fourth section 3(11) decision as it was then pleaded, which had been dismissed, and for the final module concerning the fifth section 3(11) decision and the deportation order. The applicant received half the costs of an earlier amendment application. Other modules had no order as to costs, including hearings on consequential orders where the applicant was unsuccessful on the main issues.
All costs are to be set off against each other, including relevant costs orders made elsewhere in the proceedings. The judge noted that the applicant already had a costs order for the Supreme Court appeal, though it had not yet been agreed or taxed. Costs are to be taxed if the parties do not agree the amounts. By consent, there was no order for the costs of the costs hearing.