The High Court struck out a judicial review case brought by Sukhpreet Singh Punn against the Minister for Justice and Equality, but rejected his later application for the costs of the leave hearing. The court said those costs had already been dealt with by an order made when leave was granted.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 11 November 2019, said the parties agreed the proceedings were moot and could be struck out. They also agreed that Punn should receive his costs up to the date of the State’s open offer, subject to the dispute over the leave hearing costs.
The leave order of 8 July 2019 required service of the notice of motion within seven clear days and service of the statement of grounds, affidavits and leave submissions by 12 July. It said the leave application costs would not be recoverable if those papers were not served by that deadline. The judge said the notice of motion was served in time, but the other papers were not served until 15 July.
Punn’s side argued, among other points, that service one working day late made no difference to the respondents and that the standard terms had been applied without individual consideration. The judge said an application to vary the default terms could have been made but was not. He found no particular injustice had been shown and said the present application could not be used to reopen the perfected leave order months later.
The judge rejected the costs application as misconceived, ruling that the leave costs had already been disposed of under the July order. He ordered the proceedings struck out and awarded costs to Punn, to be taxed if not agreed, except for costs already disposed of by that order and costs incurred from 8 October 2019, which were to be addressed separately.
On those later costs, the judge said the respondent had prevailed on the only issue argued since 8 October—the leave hearing costs—and ordered the respondent’s costs for that period, also to be taxed if not agreed. The parties had not objected to set-off, so the two costs orders could be offset, with the net balance payable to whichever side was ahead. The entire costs order was stayed for 28 days, and, if notice of appeal was served within that period, until the appeal was determined.