Retired High Court judge Barry White has been awarded his costs against the Minister for Justice and the State of a High Court hearing which resulted in an order that he was entitled to resume his criminal defence practice as a barrister.
While Mr White won against the State in the High Court, he lost his claim against the Bar Council and, in costs rulings on Thursday, Mr Justice Max Barrett ordered him to pay the council's costs.
The Minister for Justice had appealed the High Court order that he could resume his practice and the Court of Appeal ruled this week the Minister must reconsider her decision in the light of its findings.
The issue of liability for costs of the High Court hearing had been deferred until Thursday when Mr Justice Barrett said the rule that “costs follow the event”, meaning the losing party must pay the costs, applies.
‘Saddled with costs’
Mr Justice Barrett said that rule has produced a result that Mr White “who came to court seeking merely that he should be allowed to deploy his particular life-skills in order to turn a continuing income additional to his pension during his retirement, leaves court successful in advancing towards his ultimate objective but saddled with costs that will doubtless run to thousands of euro”.
In a lower-cost legal system, the notion that Mr White should bear the Bar Council’s costs would seem “entirely sound”, but in a higher-cost system the equity of such matters “begins to flounder”, the judge said.
This is not necessarily because of some deficiency in the grounding theory as to costs “but because of the sheer scale of costs presenting”.
The court was coerced as a matter of law into making orders giving him his costs against the State parties and directing the Bar Council get its costs against him, the judge said.