Costs in the Cause in UK Law

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.

"Costs in the cause" means that the costs of those interlocutory proceedings are to be awarded according to the final award of costs in the action. If the plaintiff wins and gets an order for his costs, he gets those interlocutory costs as part of his costs of the action against the defendant. "Plaintiff's costs in any event" means that, no matter who wins or loses, when the case is decided, or settled, the plaintiff is to have the costs of those interlocutory proceedings.

I put aside the respective merits of the dispute, I ask simply: what is to be done in a situation which the House of Lords did not envisage? I think the Court should give the plaintiffs leave under Order 21, rule 3 to discontinue. Findingthat neither side wishes to go on with this action, I think the Master and the Judge exercised their discretion wisely in giving leave to discontinue on the footing that each side is to bear its own costs, including costs in the cause.

I find it difficult to see why the law should not now recognise one standard of costs as between litigants and another when those costs form a legitimate item of damage in a "separate cause of action flowing from a different and additional wrong. It helps to keep down extravagance in litigation and that is a benefit to all those who have to resort to the law.

The common latf has made provision, to hinder malicious and frivolous and vexatious suits, that every plaintiff should find pledges, who were amerced, if the claim was false; which judgment the Gourt heretofore always gave, and then the writ was issued to the coroners, and they amerced them according to the proportion of the vexation.

In my view the county court judge misdirected himself in considering that he had any power to visit, even contingently, on the defendant the plaintiff's costs of a hearing that, as against this defendant, should never have taken place at all, and to which he was a stranger.

But the jurisdiction of the court is not to declare the law generally or to give advisory opinions; it is confined to declaring contested legal rights, subsisting or future, of the parties represented in the litigation before it and not those of anyone else.