The High Court has dismissed a defendant’s application to stop the taxation of a personal injuries plaintiff’s costs, ruling that it had no jurisdiction to hear the application after the proceedings had concluded with a final order.
Mr Justice Noonan’s judgment concerned a preliminary jurisdiction issue, not whether the delay was inordinate or whether the defendant had suffered prejudice. The defendant’s motion, issued in October 2018, sought to dismiss a summons to tax dated 23 October 2017 on grounds of delay.
The plaintiff, Anne Power, had brought proceedings against Patrick Kavanagh after suffering personal injuries in a road traffic accident on 17 February 1998. The action was settled on 14 November 2005 by the defendant’s insurer, Axa Insurance. The court made a final order by consent that the plaintiff’s costs, including reserved costs, be taxed and paid by the defendant when ascertained, and that the action be struck out.
The plaintiff’s solicitors delivered a bill of costs on 27 September 2017, almost 12 years later, and issued the summons to tax the following month. The matter came before the Taxing Master in December 2017 and was adjourned twice. The defendant’s solicitors said in May 2018 that they intended to bring the application.
The defendant relied principally on delay case law, including *Harte v Horan* [2013] 2 IR 291, and argued that the plaintiff was estopped from challenging the court’s jurisdiction because she had not raised the point earlier. The plaintiff argued that the court was *functus officio*—its role in the proceedings was over—after making the final order, and that any challenge to the Taxing Master’s process had to be brought by judicial review.
Mr Justice Noonan said *Harte v Horan* had not determined whether the court had jurisdiction to entertain such an application after a final order. He held that the court’s jurisdiction was spent once the 2005 order concluded the proceedings, except for powers expressly provided by legislation or court rules. He described the High Court’s statutory power to review a Taxing Master’s decision as limited and supervisory, rather than an ongoing power to intervene in the taxation process because of delay.
The judge said alleged unfairness and prejudice arising from delay could be grounds for seeking judicial review to prohibit the taxation process. He rejected the estoppel argument, saying estoppel could not confer jurisdiction on a court that did not have it. The application was dismissed for want of jurisdiction; the court did not decide the delay or prejudice claims on their merits.