The Supreme Court awarded seven appellants two-thirds of the costs of their appeal over a stay affecting a High Court order concerning turbines at a wind farm. It made no order on the costs of the stay application before the Court of Appeal.
The ruling concerns costs only. The underlying High Court proceedings were brought under section 160 of the Planning and Development Act 2000. The appellants had obtained relief there, including an order directing Barranafaddock Sustainability Electricity Ltd to cease operating certain turbines on its wind farm.
The Court of Appeal stayed that High Court order while the company’s substantive appeal against it remained pending. The Supreme Court later held that the stay should not have been granted, but declined to lift it. Its judgments on that appeal were delivered on 17 July 2020. The substantive appeal remains for determination by the Court of Appeal.
Seeking costs in the Supreme Court and for the Court of Appeal stay application, the appellants argued that the reasons for leaving the stay in place were unrelated to them and that the Court had accepted their point about the statutory importance of section 160. The company sought no order as to costs. It argued, among other things, that both sides had been partly successful and that the appellants had ultimately obtained no relief because the stay remained in place.
The Supreme Court declined to make a costs order for the Court of Appeal application, noting that at least some of those costs had been reserved pending that court’s final decision on the substantive issues.
For the Supreme Court appeal, it said the implications for interlocutory matters of the environmental, planning and legal services costs provisions cited by the parties had yet to be fully addressed. It nevertheless considered that the appellants had succeeded in principle, although one of their arguments failed and the stay remained in place. In those circumstances, it awarded them two-thirds of the costs of the appeal.