For those practitioners who remember Order 62 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, in force until 26 April 1999 when they were replaced by the Civil Procedure Rules, it was a relatively easy life for the court when it was considering what costs order to make at the end of a trial. Expressed in law-speak, costs would “follow the event”, which meant that whoever came first past the post had won, and so was entitled to costs, even if that was by just a short head. Thus, where one party was ordered to write a cheque to the other, that, generally, was conclusive as to the identity of the winner. (There were rare exceptions: in Alltrans Express Ltd v CVA Holdings Ltd, the Court of Appeal allowed CVA’s appeal that it should have to pay Alltran’s costs for recovering £2 against a claim for £82,500!) Continue reading
