Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

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Entries Tagged as 'Party party costs'

Interest on costs

February 2nd, 2010 · No Comments

In Victoria, you can enforce a judgment for up to 15 years: s. 5(4) Limitation of Actions Act, 1958 (Vic.).  During that time, the judgment debt earns interest at a nice little rate, the penalty interest rate: s. 101 Supreme Court Act, 1986.  As of yesterday, the penalty interest rate is 10.5%, while the cash [...]

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Tags: Party party costs

‘Snapping on’ judgment in default

December 10th, 2009 · No Comments

I must say I was brought up believing that there was nothing at all wrong with rushing down to the court’s registry and entering default judgment if an appearance, or defence, was not filed by the due date.  Apart from anything else, you force the other side to set out enough on oath about their [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Ethics · Party party costs · litigation ethics

A mistake not to make

November 24th, 2009 · No Comments

University of Western Australia v Gray (No 25) [2009] FCA 1227 is a horror story.  Gray won and Justice French ordered the University to pay his costs.  It was a big case.  But the University contended that to the extent that Gray’s lawyers had not placed themselves on the roll of practitioners maintained by the [...]

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Tags: Admission · Party party costs

Settlements unapportioned between costs and damages

November 14th, 2009 · No Comments

Morris v Riverwild Management Pty Ltd [2009] VSC 439 is a decision of Justice Pagone in an unusual dispute.  A developer built some apartments at Falls Creek.  Something obviously went wrong, because he and one of the purchasers of an apartment sued the architect, the builder, the structural engineer and his company, the supervising engineer [...]

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Tags: Out of court settlements · Party party costs

Latest on claims for the other side’s lawyers to pay your costs personally instead of their client

November 8th, 2009 · No Comments

Kelly v Jowett [2009] NSWCA 278 is the latest wasted costs case.  The lawyers against whom the order was made had tendered against them their own intra-office memorandum:
‘Your performance in the conduct of this matter has been pathetic. Your failure, given the recent transfer of these matters, to even have the courtesy to provide Hamad [...]

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Tags: Party party costs · Professional regulation · Wasted costs

Costs do not always follow the event

August 28th, 2009 · No Comments

Generally, costs of a proceeding follow the event in the sense that the winner at trial is entitled to an order that the losing party pay its costs, calculated on a party-party basis. That the loser is poor, or only just lost, or lost on a technicality, is usually irrelevant. In Jones v [...]

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Tags: Party party costs

On splitting liability and quantum

April 29th, 2009 · 2 Comments

In this post, I reproduce an extract from Justice Hoeben’s recent decision in Johnson v Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church [2009] NSWSC 309 which discusses the increasing willingness of courts (in NSW at least) to determine preliminary issues before the main trial. In this case, everything except for quantum was ordered to be [...]

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Tags: Negligence · Out of court settlements · Party party costs

Costs of complex litigation in presumptively costs-free consumer tribunals

February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments

A Queensland District Court judgment (Saunders v Paragon Property Investments Pty Ltd [2009] QDC 19) about the costs provision in a Queensland consumer tribunal has alerted me to a passage from a decision of the Queensland Court of Appeal (Tamawood Limited v Paans [2005] 2 Qd R 101) which might be useful in arguing for [...]

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Tags: Party party costs · VCAT · VCAT Act

Victorian judges more amenable to sophisticated costs orders in cases of partial success only

August 15th, 2008 · No Comments

Update, 4 May 2009: For an example of these principles in operation in a professional negligence case in which proportionate liability was given effect to (I posted about the main decision here), see Sali v Metzke & Allen (No. 2) [2009] VSC 169, where the successful plaintiff’s costs were reduced by 30% because they raised [...]

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Tags: Legal Profession Act · Party party costs · Wasted costs

“this letter will be used on the question of costs”

December 6th, 2007 · No Comments

I came across a really bad interstate solicitor a while back. One of his peccadillos was to write, at the end of all of his letters to my instructor — his opponent — ‘We thank you for your cooperation, and if you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us.’ [...]

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Tags: Party party costs