The High Court has ordered Philip Fried and Felicity Fried to pay Andrew Fried 75% of his costs of enforcement motions concerning a Spanish property known as the Villa and the protection of the parties’ elderly parents from eviction.
In a costs judgment delivered on 24 July 2024, Mr Justice Kennedy treated two motions against Felicity Fried as a single event because they relied on the same evidence and largely overlapping legal and factual arguments. Andrew Fried had been partially, and substantially, successful against her: the court had granted injunctive relief but dismissed his committal application.
The judge said enforcement action against Felicity Fried was appropriate. Most of the grounds she advanced against an injunction were found unsustainable, although some factual issues could be examined further through oral evidence and discovery if necessary. The judge declined to reserve the injunction costs, saying the parties’ entitlements had already been determined by their settlement agreement and consent order and a further trial might not occur.
But the court did not award Andrew Fried all his costs against her. The committal motion was flawed, and pursuing it put Felicity Fried to the stress, inconvenience and expense of attending the hearing in Ireland. The judge therefore ordered her to pay 75% of Andrew Fried’s costs on a party-and-party basis for both motions.
Philip Fried had consented to an injunction application before Mr Justice Heslin on 6 September 2023. The judge said the order did not appear to be final on the applications because it gave directions and adjourned them, leaving issues including costs to be resolved. He directed Philip Fried to pay 75% of Andrew Fried’s party-and-party costs on both motions against him, calculated only up to the Heslin hearing date. Those costs are to be adjudicated if the parties cannot agree.
The costs decision followed an earlier judgment on the applications. That judgment found a strong prima facie case that the defendants’ acts or omissions were intended or had the effect of frustrating an agreement to transfer the Villa for the parents’ benefit. It granted an injunction against Felicity Fried and refused both committal motions. The judge explained that the alleged breaches were of the settlement agreement, not the court order then in force; a breach of that agreement alone did not justify immediate committal. The earlier judgment said enforcement orders could be sought, and a future breach of such an order could support a later contempt application.