Fullick & Ors v The Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis

Costs incurred in connection with an inquest may be recoverable as costs incidental to related civil proceedings. The court must first identify whether the inquest work was relevant and useful to issues in the civil claim. If that threshold is met, it must separately assess whether the costs were reasonably and proportionately incurred and reasonable and proportionate in amount. The assessment is fact-sensitive. The financial value of the claim is not the sole measure of proportionality where the claim concerns matters of importance to the parties or wider public interest. A costs judge must distinguish between different categories of work and cannot allow document-related costs by broad percentage without identifying their relevance to the civil claim.

The Commissioner appealed from a decision of Deputy Master Keens dated 1 October 2018 on detailed assessment. The underlying claim followed the death of Susan Sian Jones at a police station and alleged breach of article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, negligence and misfeasance in public office. The claim settled for £18,798 before service of proceedings, but the Deputy Master ordered payment of £88,356.22, including costs relating to two pre-inquest hearings, the inquest and civil claim documents work.

The appeal concerned whether inquest-related costs were recoverable in principle and whether the assessment properly applied the proportionality requirements in CPR 44.

1. The appeal was allowed in part. The award relating to items 68 and 69 was set aside and those items were remitted for reassessment by a Costs Judge other than Master Rowley. The costs of the appeal were also to be dealt with by that Costs Judge.

2. An inquest is inquisitorial and does not determine civil liability, whereas a civil claim is adversarial. Nevertheless, costs of attending an inquest are capable of being recoverable as costs incidental to subsequent civil proceedings.

3. The first stage is to identify the issues in the civil claim and determine whether the work undertaken in the inquest was of use, service or relevance to those issues. The three strands identified in Re Gibson’s Settlement Trusts include usefulness, relevance and attribution to the defendant’s conduct.

4. If the relevance threshold is met, the costs judge must assess whether participation in each relevant step was proportionate and reasonable in amount. The court should weigh the utility of the particular participation against its cost. Agreed matters may make attendance at a pre-hearing review disproportionate, but the question remains fact-sensitive.

5. The Deputy Master was entitled to allow the costs of the inquest and the two pre-inquest hearings. The claim concerned the cause of death, police procedures and article 2 issues. The claim’s importance to the family and its wider public interest were relevant to proportionality, notwithstanding the modest damages.

6. The Deputy Master erred in relation to items 68 and 69 by failing to identify the categories and subject matter of documents and what proportion of the work was relevant to the civil claim. That assessment had to precede any assessment of the overall proportionality of the costs.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division) — The appeal from the Senior Courts Costs Office was allowed in part under [2019] EWHC 1941 (QB).
• Senior Courts Costs Office — Deputy Master Keens ordered payment of £88,356.22 on detailed assessment following judgment dated 1 October 2018.