The High Court has affirmed a Taxing Master’s decision allowing €83,014.74 in costs against James Kenny, rejecting his application to review the assessment.
In a judgment delivered on 17 June 2005, Quirke J. said he could find no error of principle or reasoning in the Master’s decision. The court declined the relief sought and affirmed the ruling.
The costs arose from proceedings in which Kenny sought to reopen an earlier judicial review concerning, among other matters, the location of boiler houses. The defendants included the Provost, Fellows and Scholars of the University of Dublin, Trinity College, and Dublin City Council. Kenny alleged irregularity in the earlier proceedings and claimed that developers had misled the court.
The High Court initially refused an application by the defendants to strike out Kenny’s claim. On appeal, the Supreme Court struck it out as disclosing no reasonable cause of action and awarded the defendants the costs of the appeal. The High Court later awarded the defendants the costs of the action, including the strike-out motion.
The Taxing Master assessed the High Court costs at €40,533.83, from a claim of €77,188.96, and the Supreme Court appeal costs at €42,480.91, from a claim of €93,542.88. Kenny objected, arguing that the proceedings were effectively a “little motion” and that costs should be minimal. He contended that the Master had wrongly considered the wider facts and background.
Quirke J. rejected that argument. The judge said the strike-out application was serious and required consideration of issues from the earlier case and the later plenary proceedings. The defendants had submitted substantial affidavit evidence, while Kenny’s own affidavit ran to about 29 pages. The Supreme Court’s decision rested on the absence, or insufficient particularity, of a pleaded fraud claim, but that did not limit recoverable costs to that issue alone.
The judgment said the defendants could recover costs reasonably incurred in meeting Kenny’s allegations and arguments. The court held that the Taxing Master had applied the relevant criteria and considered comparators appropriately. It therefore left the assessed amounts in place.