Costs Follow the Event in UK Law

In doing this the new Rules are reflecting a change of practice which has already started. It is now clear that a too robust application of the "follow the event principle" encourages litigants to increase the costs of litigation, since it discourages litigants from being selective as to the points they take. If you recover all your costs as long as you win, you are encouraged to leave no stone unturned in your effort to do so.

That party who turns out to have unjustifiably either brought another party before the court, or given another party cause to have recourse to the court to obtain his rights is required to recompense that other party in costs; but (2) the judge has under Section 50 of the Judicature Act an unlimited discretion to make what order as to costs he considers that the justice of the case requires.

If, in relation to any issue in the case before it the court considers that it should adopt an issue based approach to costs, the court must ask itself which party has been successful on that issue. Then, if the costs are to follow the event on that issue, the party who has been unsuccessful on that issue must expect to pay the costs of that issue to the party who has succeeded on that issue. That is the effect of applying the general principle on an issue by issue based approach to costs.

The exercise of this regulatory function places the Law Society in a wholly different position to that of a party to ordinary civil litigation. The normal approach to costs decisions in such litigation – dealing with it very broadly, that properly incurred costs should follow the “event” and be paid by the unsuccessful party – would appear to have no direct application to disciplinary proceedings against a solicitor.

For the Law Society to be exposed to the risk of an adverse costs order simply because properly brought proceedings were unsuccessful might have a chilling effect on the exercise of its regulatory obligations, to the public disadvantage.

The principles applicable in the present case may, I think, be summarised as follows: (i) costs cannot be recovered except under an order of the court; (ii) the question whether to make any order as to costs and, if so, what order is a matter entrusted to the discretion of the trial judge; (iii) the starting point for the exercise of discretion is that costs should follow the event; nevertheless, (iv) the judge may make different orders for costs in relation to discrete issues and, in particular, should consider doing so where a party has been successful on one issue but unsuccessful on another issue and, in that event, may make an order for costs against the party who has been generally successful in the litigation; and (v) the judge may deprive a party of costs on an issue on which he has been successful if satisfied that the party has acted unreasonably in relation to that issue; (vi) an appellate court should not interfere with the judge's exercise of discretion merely because it takes the view that it would have exercised that discretion differently.

However, in the Family Division there still remains the necessity for some starting point. That starting point, in my judgment, is that costs prima facie follow the event (see Cumming-Bruce L.J. in Singer v. Sharegin (1984) FLR 114 at p. 119) but may be displaced much more easily than, and in circumstances which would not apply, in other Divisions of the High Court.