The court has a wide discretion whether to order the assessment of costs on an indemnity basis and the court of Appeal will rarely disturb the judge’s order as to costs.
Judge LJ said: ‘By treating the absence of allocation to track as conclusive in my judgment District Judge Jenkins misdirected himself. The omission may have meant that the small claims costs regime did not follow as a virtual automatic starting point, but it did not preclude the Court even from considering whether it would be reasonable to make an assessment consistent with the small cost regime, or for that matter to apply the regime for a claim which it should never have exceeded and never was anything more than a small claim. If that approach is not expressly stated in the Civil Procedure Rules, it follows from two essential principles. First, the discretionary nature of costs orders; and secondly, the overriding requirement of proportionality in civil litigation generally and also as an essential agreement for consideration when any question of costs arises. See Home Office v Lownds [2002] EWCA 365.’
Judges:
Judge LJ
Citations:
[2003] EWCA Civ 736
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – John Louis Carter Fourie v Allan Le Roux and others CA 7-Mar-2005
The defendant’s company in South Africa had become insolvent and the claimant had recovered judgment for arrears of rent. They obtained a freezing order against the defendant. The defendant appealed saying the court did not have jurisdiction, and . .
Cited – O’Beirne v Hudson CA 9-Feb-2010
The matter had been settled by a consent order providing for costs on a standard basis, however the costs judge had decided that the matter would if it had proceeded, have been allocated to the small claims track, and therefore limited his costs . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contract, Costs
Updated: 23 November 2022; Ref: scu.182596
