The High Court has ordered that only CPM Consulting Limited’s costs of an unsuccessful interlocutory injunction application be treated as costs in the cause, after finding it was not possible to decide fairly at this stage who should ultimately bear all the application’s costs.
Mr Justice David Keane delivered the costs ruling on 18 November 2020. It followed his 28 October decision refusing Muhammad Sabir Hafeez’s application for an injunction requiring CPM to immediately give him possession of restaurant premises he leased from the company. CPM claimed the lease had been forfeited.
Neither party contacted the court or filed written submissions on outstanding issues within the stipulated 14 days, the judge said. He considered the rules requiring costs to be awarded on an interlocutory application unless a just decision could not be made at that stage, and the general principle that costs follow success, subject to the case’s circumstances and the parties’ conduct.
CPM had succeeded on the injunction application. The judge found no reason in the circumstances or conduct of the proceedings to depart from the usual principle. But he said the injunction decision had turned significantly on whether Hafeez could establish that the lease forfeiture was invalid, had been waived, or should be set aside on equitable grounds. A different picture might emerge at trial, particularly in the assessment of the equities, making it unjust to settle the costs of that issue at the interlocutory stage.
The parties had also disputed the balance of convenience, or least risk of injustice, in granting an injunction. That issue had been resolved against Hafeez and would not be revisited at trial. Following an approach used in an earlier case, the judge ordered that only CPM’s costs of the injunction application would be costs in the cause. Hafeez’s costs were not included in that order.
The ruling concerns costs of the interlocutory application; it does not determine the ultimate dispute over the lease or the parties’ liability for costs in the proceedings as a whole.