The High Court has treated a challenge to a deportation order as moot after the order was revoked, but ordered the applicant to pay the respondent’s costs incurred from 12 July 2021. It made no order as to costs incurred before that date, including reserved costs, and did not decide the original legal challenges.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as K.N.M. orse K.M., had challenged a decision under section 49(9) of the International Protection Act 2015 and a deportation order. Leave to bring the judicial review proceedings was granted on 23 July 2018. He married his partner in an Islamic ceremony the following month; the court accepted that it was not a valid legal marriage.
At a hearing on 6 April 2019, the applicant told the court for the first time that his partner was pregnant. The judge adjourned the proceedings, over the respondent’s objection, to allow an application to the Minister seeking revocation of the deportation order. The child was born on 17 July 2019. The applicant later made an application relying on the CJEU’s Zambrano judgment.
The section 3(11) application to revoke the deportation order was granted on 6 April 2021. Two days later, the Zambrano application was granted and the applicant received stamp 4 leave to remain. Formal notice that the deportation order had been revoked was given on 8 July 2021. The court said those changes meant the proceedings no longer needed to be determined and were moot, leaving costs to resolve.
On the main costs issue, the judge concluded there was no causal connection between bringing the judicial review and revoking the deportation order: the revocation followed the pregnancy and birth, and would have been considered on that basis whether or not proceedings had been issued. The judge treated pregnancy and birth as developments outside the applicant’s control and found that the presumption of no order as to costs had not been displaced.
A separate costs question arose after the applicant rejected the State’s offer of no order as to costs and sought a hearing. The court ordered the applicant to pay the respondent’s costs incurred on and after 12 July 2021, when costs arising from the rejected offer began accumulating. The judgment did not rule on the merits of the original challenge.