Judicial costs control

The recent decision by the senior costs judge, Master Hurst in Henry v News Group Newspapers [2012] EWHC 90218 (Costs), is a useful indicator of how seriously judges are likely to take their duty to manage costs.

Costs budgeting, also known as costs estimating and costs management, was first mooted by Lord Justice Jackson in his preliminary report in May 2009. He identified a peculiarity of litigation, namely that, at the time when costs were being run up, no-one knew who would be paying the bill or how much that bill would be. In his view it was no longer acceptable for questions of costs to be left to the end of litigation—some judicial control on the expenditure of costs during the life of the case had to be introduced as a necessary part of case management. After all, he noted, litigation was often a “project”, which both parties were pursuing for commercial ends. Any