In Hanspaul and Another v Ward and Another, Master Chief Marsh considered the right approach to determining the costs of a claim where all other issues between the parties had been resolved without a trial. On the facts of this case, he concluded that it would be wrong to direct a trial when he was convinced that a fair result could be achieved by a hearing with oral submissions.
Background
The case involved a family dispute over the running of a family settlement that owned a chain of residential care homes in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. A disagreement arose between the two children of the original settlers of the discretionary family settlement and the son brought a claim against his sister and the trustees over their conduct and also sought to remove and replace the trustees and the protector of the settlement. The substantive issues in the claim were, however, resolved without the need for a trial.
Nevertheless, the issue of costs of the claim remained and the parties accordingly put forward various options in their submissions, namely a full trial, a ‘trial lite’ – a shortened trial with restrictions on the amount of disclosure and witness evidence – or a hearing based on written evidence and oral submissions.
The Decision
Master Marsh considered the relevant authorities, which seemingly presented two different lines of authority on whether a case should proceed to trial where an agreement on costs had not been reached but all other issues had been resolved without the need for a trial. However, he concluded that the authorities were not actually conflicting approaches – merely examples of the court’s wide discretion as to how to deal with different cases based on the particular circumstances of each case.
The judge noted that the decision as to whether a case should go to trial in such circumstances should be fact-specific and there was no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Nevertheless, when determining what was appropriate for any given case, the court should have regard to the overriding objective of the Civil Procedure Rules set out in CPR 1.1, which prioritises the need to deal with cases ‘justly and at a proportionate cost’.
On the facts of this case, Master Marsh found that further disclosure was unlikely to be necessary, nor was cross-examination of witnesses essential. Taking into account the interests of all the parties and the needs of other court users ‘in competition for scarce (court) resources’, he concluded that it was unnecessary to order a trial and that the court could determine the costs in a just and fair manner by a hearing with oral submission.
Comment
While there may be some cases where a full trial is appropriate to resolve outstanding cost issues, these are relatively few and far between given the increased recognition of the need to achieve justice at proportionate cost following the Jackson reforms.
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