Niprose Investments Limited & Ors v Vincents Solicitors Limited (Costs)

Where a strike-out or summary-judgment application would have succeeded on the pleading as it stood, but the claim survives because comprehensive amendments are permitted, the starting point is that the respondent should pay the costs of that application. The court must then exercise its discretion having regard to all the circumstances, including partial success, conduct and the overriding objective. Where the respondent substantially succeeds on the amendment application, the applicant should bear the substantial part of the later costs. A proportionate discount may reflect both unsuccessful amendments and unreasonable opposition. Costs of separate stages may be apportioned and set off.

The judgment concerned costs arising from a defendant’s application to strike out or obtain summary judgment in a professional-negligence claim brought by purchasers against their former conveyancing solicitors. In earlier judgments, the court found that the original pleading was fundamentally deficient, but allowed the claimants to amend most of their case. It refused permission for some proposed individual-advice amendments and one scope-of-duty and duty-nexus argument.

The issue was how to allocate the costs of the original application, the informal amendment application and the two hearings, given that the defendant’s application would have succeeded without the amendments, while the claimants were substantially successful in obtaining permission to amend.

1. Costs discretion. The award of costs requires a fact-sensitive but principled exercise of discretion. The court must seek an acceptable consistency between like cases and consider all the circumstances, including conduct and partial success. CPR 44.2 supplies the general framework.
2. Costs of the original application. The court applied the approach in Bellhouse v Zurich Insurance Plc [2025] EWHC 1551 (Comm). Where a strike-out or summary-judgment application would have succeeded on the existing pleading, and the claim proceeds only because comprehensive amendments are permitted, the starting point is that the respondent pays the costs. The original case is treated as fundamentally defective, and the applicant is the successful party on that stage.
3. Costs after the amendments. The defendant was not entitled to recover the later costs merely because its original application had been merited. Once it had reviewed the proposed amendments, it should have engaged constructively with them in furtherance of the overriding objective and its duty under CPR 1.3 to help the court further that objective. The claimants were substantially successful at the amendment hearing, notwithstanding the amendments refused, and were therefore entitled to the substantial part of their later costs.
4. Order. The claimants were ordered to pay 71% of the defendant’s recoverable costs up to 22 July 2024. The claimants recovered 90% of their later costs, after deductions for unreasonable or disproportionate attendance and counsel’s fees. The sums were set off, leaving a net £2,064.73 payable by the defendant to the claimants’ solicitors within 14 days. The claimants were also held liable for the costs of and occasioned by the amendments.

Not stated in the judgment. The decision was a first-instance costs determination following earlier judgments in the same proceedings.