Funding and Costs of Legal Aid in UK Law

The expression aptly describes conduct which is vexatious, designed to harass the other side rather than advance the resolution of the case, and it makes no difference that the conduct is the product of excessive zeal and not improper motive. The acid test is whether the conduct permits of a reasonable explanation. If so, the course adopted may be regarded as optimistic and as reflecting on a practitioner's judgment, but it is not unreasonable.

But for whatever importance it may have, we are clear that "negligent" should be understood in an untechnical way to denote failure to act with the competence reasonably to be expected of ordinary members of the profession.

If a person enters into a contract for sale of a real estate knowing that he has no title to it nor any means of acquiring it, the purchaser cannot recover damages beyond the expenses he has incurred by an action for the breach of the contract.

I should like to say (what is indeed obvious) that where a plaintiff in the end fails it must be a very unusual thing to order the successful defendant to pay the costs; and it would only be in exceptional cases that a Judge would think to right to make such an ordered.

To say of the Appellant that he should not get his costs because he acted rashly, or steered rather close to the wind, is one thing; as has been often said a successful defendant has no right to his costs. But to order him to pay the costs incurred by the Plaintiffs in launching a motion to commit which in the event proved unjustified is quite another matter.