The High Court has sent a €212,000 legal instruction fee ruling back to a newly appointed Taxing Master for a fresh determination, finding that the original assessment used an artificial and irrational method. The court did not decide what fee should be allowed instead.
The review concerned costs in a personal injury case brought by Scott Bourbon, a minor represented by his mother and next friend, Joanna Bourbon. He was seven when a vehicle struck him while he was crossing an access road at Rahoon Park in Galway in 1993. The judgment records that he suffered serious head and left-leg injuries. The vehicle’s driver was uninsured, and the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland was joined as a defendant. The claim settled for €800,000, which the judgment says represented half its full value.
The plaintiff’s solicitors claimed an instruction fee of €240,000. The defendants argued that €135,000 was appropriate. The Taxing Master allowed €212,000, then upheld that amount after the defendants objected. In doing so, he used a calculation based on the case’s duration and an estimated average of 1.77 hours of work per week at €200 an hour.
The High Court said the Taxing Master had to examine the nature and extent of the work, consider the time and labour involved, assess any special skill and responsibility required, and give reasons for the amount allowed. It found that he had not properly analysed whether the solicitors’ retrospective time estimates were reasonable, and had worked backwards from the €212,000 figure to justify it. The court also held that relevant comparator cases could be used as a cross-check after the work itself was assessed; the Taxing Master had refused to do so.
The court ruled that the plaintiff’s parents’ relationship and the plaintiff’s relationship with his mother were not relevant to party-and-party costs. It also held that the claimed 70 hours for “suicide abatement”—telephone and email contact with the plaintiff—should not have formed part of the costs claim, observing that solicitors are not qualified to provide counselling or psychiatric advice. On the guardian appointment work, it said the Taxing Master had failed to assess time spent and give sufficient weight to work undertaken by two US attorneys.
The court allowed the review to the extent that it set aside the Taxing Master’s determination and remitted the general instruction fee to a newly appointed Taxing Master. It made no fresh assessment of the fee. The judgment also raised, without deciding, whether the financial crisis should be considered when taxing costs, noting that the issue had not been argued.