The High Court has imposed strict conditions around a rehearing in a divorce dispute so as to ensure that there is “no more profligate expenditure on legal costs”.
HHJ Wildblood QC said there had been a “truly scandalous” amount of costs racked up in JE (husband) v ZK (wife) [2015] EWHC B87, which he described as “a very straightforward case that has gone off the rails”.
He explained: “It involves a home, a working husband who is effectively a sole trader, a few modest assets, considerable liabilities, two children and a depressed wife. For money to have been wasted on such disproportionate costs is truly scandalous. Further, these parties have two children – what sort of example do they set their children when they spend so much of the money that should be directed to their children’s welfare on blinkered and self-validating litigation?”
The costs to date accounted for approximately 36% of the assets in dispute between the couple, and the judge was “particularly critical” of the wife’s costs – which, at approximately £82,000 including the appeal, were more than double those of the husband. “Nothing that I have seen gets anywhere near justifying that. I have myself witnessed two wholly unnecessary applications being brought by the wife: (a) for transcripts of all of the evidence before the district judge to be ordered at the husband’s expense for the purposes of the appeal, an application which I did not allow and (b) a full legal services application, when the correct application should have been for a partial release on a stay which, when I suggested it, was agreed on the evening before a hearing of the legal services application brought by the wife and only after considerable cost expenditure (W’s claimed costs £3875.70)”.
HHJ Wildblood ruled, “with regret”, that the husband’s appeal against the district judge’s ruling on the financial settlement between the couple could not stand; not having enough information to decide the matter himself, he ordered a rehearing “under very tight directions”. He warned: “If I find any more money is being wasted by this wife on costs, I will impose costs sanctions – if she, or the husband, pursues any more pointless or unmeritorious issues, I will reflect that in a costs order.”
He continued: “There will be no more profligate expenditure on legal costs. To that end, I wish to record that any district judge assessing the costs of either party from this point on until conclusion of the rehearing should disallow that parties’ costs insofar as the costs of any party (from this point onwards) exceed £7,500 unless (a) any party has made submissions to me that I should revise that figure or (b) the judge carrying out the assessment considers that an extension beyond that figure was genuinely necessary.
“I strongly recommend now that the parties make every effort to resolve their differences without the need for the rehearing to take place.”