The High Court has ordered the Law Society of Ireland and solicitor Daniel Coleman to bear their own costs across disciplinary proceedings that began in 2010. The costs ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Garrett Simons on 31 December 2020, followed separate outcomes on two complaints and two applications for extra time to appeal.
The court held that the default rule under Part 11 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 applies to disciplinary proceedings brought by a regulator. A party who is entirely successful is generally entitled to costs unless the court orders otherwise and gives reasons. The public-interest role of a regulator can inform the court’s discretion, but does not create an automatic exemption from costs.
The underlying complaints concerned confirmation to a lending institution that sales of residential units had been completed, and an alleged failure to comply with an undertaking to hold land title deeds to a credit union’s order. Earlier proceedings resulted in a strike-off order in 2010. The Supreme Court later set that order aside and remitted the application to the High Court.
In September 2020, the High Court found a sustainable basis for the misconduct findings on the first complaint and again ordered Coleman struck off the Roll of Solicitors. It found the misconduct findings on the second complaint, concerning the credit union undertaking, unsustainable and dismissed the Law Society’s application on that complaint. Those outcomes were addressed in earlier judgments; the December ruling allocated costs.
Justice Simons said Coleman was entirely successful in resisting the application concerning the undertaking and was entitled to costs for it. He found no reason to depart from that default. He noted that the Law Society pursued the strike-off application to the end despite relevant documentation Coleman had brought to its attention, and that it had initially sought compensation for the credit union. The Society was entitled to pursue its case, but its decision to fully contest it was relevant to costs. The judge also praised the professional conduct of Coleman’s legal representatives and his agreement to proceed by written submissions after COVID-related restrictions prevented completion of the hearing.
The Society was entirely successful on the other strike-off application and entitled to its costs. Because the applications shared substantial hearing time, the court set the two costs awards off against each other, leaving each side to bear its own costs. The same result applied to Coleman’s two unsuccessful applications for extra time to appeal: the judge said the correctness of one refusal was open to question, and the issues substantially overlapped. The final order was that each party bear its own costs.