The Court of Appeal has ordered Piotr Skoczylas to pay Permanent TSB Group Holdings plc’s costs of his unsuccessful application for a stay, with the amount subject to adjudication if the parties cannot agree. The court also stayed that costs order on the same terms as an existing stay on an earlier costs order.
The ruling, delivered on 31 July 2020, dealt only with the costs of the stay application. The court said the application had failed, so the usual rule that costs follow the event applied. It had invited Skoczylas to make submissions on whether a different costs order should be made, and considered submissions from both sides.
Skoczylas argued that the company was responsible for generating the costs and that it would be “grossly unjust” to make him pay further costs. He said he had not intended to issue formal motion papers and did so at the company’s request. The court considered a motion appropriate: the further stay he sought was novel, strongly opposed, and needed its terms and grounds to be set out. It said hearing time would have been required even without a formal motion, and that the company’s costs would have been incurred in any event.
He also complained that the hearing lasted 102 minutes despite being listed for an hour. The court said the hearing ran longer because, after Skoczylas voluntarily chose not to participate in the remote hearing, it tested the company’s position against his written arguments.
The court declined to revisit criticisms Skoczylas made of earlier judgments, saying those decisions were final and conclusive in that court, subject to possible appeals to the Supreme Court. It said criticisms of their merits were not relevant to deciding costs.
The ruling also rejected Skoczylas’ claim that Collins J should have disclosed his past work for the State in the Apple State Aid matter and his professional work with company counsel, Mr Gallagher SC, now Attorney General. The court said those professional connections were matters of public record and did not approach the applicable threshold for objective bias.
The costs are to be adjudicated under Part 10 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 if the parties do not agree. The ruling did not determine the amount payable.