Civil Costs Case Law Update – January 2025
TRAPPIT S.A. v GBT TRAVEL SERVICES UK LIMITED [2024] EWHC 3285 (Ch) 18 December 2024. Where notice of discontinuance under CPR 38 and been served, the Chief Chancery Master upheld the default position under CPR r.38.6(1) that the claimants were liable for the defendant’s costs incurred up to the date of discontinuance of proceedings. The defendant’s alleged delayed disclosure of a source code had not justified disapplying the presumption, and the claimants could have sought earlier disclosure. However, the litigation was not sufficiently out of the norm to warrant indemnity costs. It followed that the costs of the action were awarded to the defendants on the standard basis.
Packer v Packer [2025] EWHC 27 (Ch) 14 January 2025. The issue for the court was to decide who should pay the costs consequential upon the claimant’s decision to amend the Reply in order to withdraw an allegation of fraud in contested probate proceedings. The offending pleading had said “It is the claimant’s position that the Alleged Wills have been fraudulently created by the Defendant”. The defendants contended that there should be an order for costs for not only the immediate costs of dealing with the application, but also for a proportion of the costs already expended in meeting the withdrawn allegation of fraud. That submission failed. There was no good reason for the general rule to be disapplied. Accordingly, the costs of and occasioned by the application were ordered to be paid by the party amending (to be summarily assessed), but excluding any of the costs already incurred in the litigation by the defendant in responding to the abandoned allegation of fraud.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2025] EWHC 106 (KB). In proceedings which were subject to costs budgeting, whilst parties were free to exceed the budget – i.e. to spend more than the budget permitted on the litigation – they were unlikely to be able to recover a sum in excess of the budgeted costs if another party was ordered to pay their costs. The extant proceedings involved each of the seven Claimants alleging against the Defendant that their private information has been misused by the Defendant and in the case of the First Claimant, an additional claim had been made for breach of confidence. The parties sought approval for budgets respectively for the Claimants and Defendant of £18,744,761 and £19,850,282, in respect of which amounts of £4,074.,411 and £8,125,379 had been incurred already. Nicklin J and Senior Master Cook held that such sums were manifestly excessive and therefore disproportionate. They allowed total budgeted costs of £4,084,000 for the Claimants and £4,445,000 for the Defendant for costs going forward, commenting that the court when undertaking costs budgeting, should not engage in an overly elaborate analysis of each phase, but should stand back and look at the bigger picture. Costs management was not an exercise of reducing the parties’ costs to an irreducible minimum but setting reasonable and proportionate parameters.
Birley v Heritage Independent Living Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 44 Carr LCJ, Birss, Warby LJJ28 January 2025. The main question for the court to decide was whether the cost provisions relating to certain media claims, which at one time had permitted recovery of a success fee together with an after the event (ATE) insurance premium, could be applicable at the same time as qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) applicable to personal injury claims. The short answer to that was “Yes”. The Court upheld a finding below that the failure by a claimant to serve the claim form, or to comply fully with the Pre-Action Protocol, was not an abuse of process. It followed that the QOCS regime continued to apply.
