The High Court awarded the Board of Management of All Saints Church of Ireland National School half its costs in an access dispute with the Courts Service, while ordering the school to pay the defendant’s costs of an unsuccessful application for an interlocutory injunction.
Mr Justice Michael Peart ruled on costs on 22 November 2011, after delivering his substantive judgment on 6 July 2011. In that earlier decision, the school obtained a declaration that an equitable easement existed for access by certain people to the school, which is beside and behind the Courthouse at Mullingar. The costs judgment said the precise terms of the easement were set out in the court’s earlier order.
The school argued that, having obtained the relief it sought, it should receive its costs under the usual rule that costs follow the event. The Courts Service asked the court to depart from that rule, arguing that the proceedings had been unnecessary because it had previously offered the school an irrevocable licence over a particular route. The school had rejected that offer.
The judge noted that the school’s original claim sought a legal right of way across the courthouse grounds for pedestrians and vehicles. At the opening of the case, counsel abandoned the vehicle claim and advanced a narrower claim for an equitable easement allowing people on foot to reach a gate at the rear of the courthouse. The judge said the declaration ultimately made was somewhat wider than the licence offered by the Courts Service, but not significantly so.
He found special reasons to depart from the usual costs rule, citing the earlier licence offer and the significant narrowing of the school’s claim when the case opened. He said it would be unjust to make the Courts Service bear all the proceedings costs, which he considered might have been avoided if the school had taken a more flexible approach to the offer.
The order awarded the school half its costs of the proceedings, to be taxed if the parties could not agree. The Courts Service was awarded its costs of the unsuccessful injunction application. Those amounts are to be set off against each other, with the party owed any remaining balance to be paid by the other. The judgment did not specify the monetary value of either costs award.