Pasricha v Pasricha (Rev 1)

Where a trial is adjourned unexpectedly, the court may revisit a deemed or approved costs budget under CPR 3.14 and CPR 3.18. A court may make a summary costs order on the standard basis and depart from the budget where there is good reason. The relevant question is fact-sensitive. In particular, costs may be shifted where responsibility for the ineffective hearing can clearly be attributed to one party. Where the adjournment results from judicial unavailability and neither party is at fault, the proper order may be that each party bears its own costs.

The appeal concerned an order made by His Honour Judge Lochrane after a three-day trial was adjourned because no trial judge was available. The Appellant sought recovery of a £6,500 brief fee from the Respondent. The Defendants’ costs budgets had been limited to court fees under CPR 3.14 after budgets were not filed. The Respondent had also paid the trial fee late, but had obtained relief from sanctions, and that order remained effective.

The central issues were whether the court had jurisdiction to revisit the deemed costs budget and make a costs order, and, if so, how that discretion should be exercised.

1. The appeal was dismissed. Although the judge below had erred to the extent that he considered himself unable, as a matter of jurisdiction, to make the requested costs order, the order that there be no order as to costs was the correct result.

2. CPR 3.14 is widely drafted. The court may order otherwise where circumstances materially change, including where an unexpected event such as judicial unavailability makes it unjust to treat a deemed budget as immutable. The jurisdiction to revisit an order for material change of circumstance was supported by Tibbles v SIG plc [2012] EWCA Civ 518.

3. CPR 3.18 applies when a judge is invited to make a costs order and assess costs summarily on the standard basis. The court must have regard to the receiving party’s approved, agreed or deemed budget and should not depart from it unless satisfied that there is good reason.

4. The question whether there is good reason is fact-specific. The relevant consideration was whether the adjournment could clearly be laid at the Respondent’s door so that it would be wrong not to make her pay the costs thrown away.

5. That threshold was not met. The Respondent’s late-payment sanction had been removed by an effective order which could not be revisited in this appeal. The trial failed because of judicial unavailability, for which neither party was responsible. The proper order was therefore no order as to costs both below and on the appeal.

• High Court (Chancery Division): On appeal from the order of His Honour Judge Lochrane dated 3 February 2020, the appeal was dismissed. The court held that the lower court had jurisdiction to make a costs order but upheld the result of no order as to costs.