The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision that Piotr Skoczylas must pay Permanent TSB Group Holdings plc’s costs of his failed application to have the trial judge recused. But it allowed his appeal against the judge’s decision to set those costs at €20,000 plus VAT, ordering instead that the costs be taxed and ascertained.
In a judgment delivered on 21 January 2020, Ms Justice Costello said the recusal application had failed because there was no reasonable apprehension that the case would not be decided by an impartial judge. The test was whether an objective, reasonable observer aware of the relevant facts would have such an apprehension. The court found that Mr Skoczylas had not met that test.
Justice Costello said costs were generally at the court’s discretion, with Order 99 of the Rules of the Superior Courts providing that costs follow the event. The recusal application had failed in both the High Court and on appeal, and the respondent company had been entitled to oppose it. She saw no special reason to deprive the successful party of its costs and no error in the High Court judge’s decision to award them.
The appeal succeeded on how the costs were measured. The High Court judge had set the amount at €20,000 plus VAT without first giving the parties an opportunity to make submissions on whether he should measure the costs himself or on the level of the amount. Justice Costello held that this was an error and failed to respect Mr Skoczylas’s right to be heard.
The judgment said the trial judge was not required to receive evidence about the company’s costs or the amount likely to be allowed on taxation. He could rely on his own experience. But the parties still had to be allowed to address the decision to measure the costs and the figure set.
Justice Costello therefore ordered that Mr Skoczylas pay the company’s costs of the recusal application when taxed and ascertained. Her judgment concurred with Mr Justice Collins’s judgment on the appeals in all other respects; the supplied judgment does not set out the full terms of the Court of Appeal’s overall order.