By Ciaran Vale
The High Court has rejected an attempt by Piotr Skoczylas to reopen claims for five invoices covering non-legal litigation support which had already been rejected through the legal costs adjudication process and subsequent court appeals.
The dispute arose from lengthy litigation involving Skoczylas, Irish Life and Permanent Group and the Minister for Finance. Earlier costs orders entitled Skoczylas to recover specified proportions of allowable outlay.
In 2020, he submitted 26 invoices issued by Scotchstone Capital LLP, an English limited liability partnership of which he was a member. The invoices claimed fees for what were described as professional research, consulting and non-legal litigation services.
The Legal Costs Adjudicator rejected those invoices. That determination was reconsidered and confirmed in 2021, followed by a final certificate in April 2022. The High Court upheld the result in January 2023, and the Court of Appeal affirmed that decision in July 2024.
Skoczylas later submitted a fresh bill covering five of the same invoices. He argued that the Court of Appeal judgment had established that this type of expense could in principle be recoverable and that the remaining issue of the amount payable had therefore not been decided.
Mr Justice Conleth Bradley rejected that interpretation. The judge said the Court of Appeal had confirmed that the actual invoices before the adjudicator were not recoverable because Skoczylas had failed to provide the necessary evidence establishing that the work was genuinely expert work required for the litigation.
The High Court held that correspondence from the Legal Costs Adjudicator in October 2024 was not a fresh statutory determination capable of review. Filing another bill could not create a new adjudication jurisdiction over matters already conclusively decided.
The court dismissed the application as res judicata, subject to issue estoppel and an abuse of process. It also refused Skoczylas's request to refer proposed questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Costs were left for a later hearing.