The Supreme Court has directed that a secondary school’s Board of Management may recover its costs of an interlocutory hearing and a Supreme Court appeal brought by a pupil, who is identified only as MD and is a minor.
In a ruling delivered electronically on 13 May 2024, the Court said the school was entirely successful in defending the proceedings and was entitled to costs under the ordinary rule in section 169 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. It rejected the pupil’s submissions that the case’s public importance, its mootness, and his status as a minor were exceptional circumstances justifying a different order.
The dispute arose after the school sought to expel MD following serious allegations against him as a pupil. The Board made a preliminary decision to expel him on 17 January 2023. Before it made a final decision, MD sought to remain enrolled while a statutory appeal was pending. The ruling says the school’s chair replied that departmental procedures did not provide for a student to remain at school pending the Board’s final decision.
MD obtained leave to seek judicial review. On 14 February 2023, a High Court judge also stayed the Board’s exclusion decision pending determination of the statutory appeal. The school later applied to set aside interim injunctive orders; that application was refused by another High Court judge on 8 March 2023. The Board decided the following day to permanently exclude MD. The appeal committee rejected his statutory appeal on 8 June 2023, rendering the underlying issue moot.
The Supreme Court nevertheless granted leave for a direct appeal, citing the importance of the issues. It later held that the school succeeded on all issues, including that the ordinary practice governing interlocutory relief applied and that the balance of convenience had not been properly weighed.
On costs, the Court acknowledged it would normally be slow to make an order against a minor. It said, however, that leaving the school to bear its own potentially considerable costs would leave it without recourse, with the burden ultimately falling on the school and, by extension, its parents and pupils. It also said MD and his father, acting as next friend, must have been aware of the risk of an adverse costs order if the injunction application failed.
The order entitles the school to recover the costs of the March 2023 interlocutory hearing before the High Court and the Supreme Court appeal, once adjudicated and ascertained if the parties cannot agree. The ruling does not state a final sum.