The High Court refused a defendant’s request to bypass a €4,309 fee required before he could obtain a certificate needed to pursue €75,260.75 in court costs.
In a judgment delivered on 18 June 2009, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the court had no jurisdiction to waive the fee, allow it to be paid later, or direct the Taxing Master to issue the certificate on an undertaking to pay.
The costs arose after proceedings brought by Michael Barrett, trading as Corporate Recovery Services, against Michael Beglan and ERT Foundation Limited. In June 2007, the court ordered the proceedings against Beglan to be struck out as an abuse of process and ordered a lis pendens registered against his estate to be vacated. In April 2008, that order was amended: the proceedings against Beglan were dismissed, and Barrett was ordered to pay Beglan’s costs, including reserved costs.
The Taxing Master assessed those costs at €75,260.75 on 30 July 2008. Beglan’s solicitor, Fiona Healy, said in an affidavit that Beglan could not afford the €4,309 in fees needed to take up the Certificate of Taxation. She said his only available asset for sale was a plot of land for which he had been unable to find a buyer over the previous year. The judgment records that the plaintiff’s solicitor received no reply to a request for a cheque to cover the fee.
Beglan asked the court to direct Barrett to pay the fee or, alternatively, to let the certificate issue before the fee was paid, with an undertaking that it would be paid if costs were recovered. His counsel argued that the court could use its inherent jurisdiction to provide a remedy. Counsel appearing for Barrett had no instructions to make submissions in response.
Justice Peart said the rules required the party entitled to costs to pay the duty and fees before taking up the certificate. He found no rule, statute or inherent jurisdiction empowering the court to dispense with that requirement or order payment of the fee in advance by Barrett. He also said the application was not a challenge to the constitutionality of the fees order; that would require separate proceedings.
The judge acknowledged the difficulty facing Beglan and noted that the taxed costs were substantial. But sympathy was not enough to grant any of the requested reliefs, and he refused the motion. The judgment did not determine any separate constitutional challenge to the fees or the eventual recovery of the costs.