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England and Wales High Court (Senior Courts Costs Office) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Senior Courts Costs Office) Decisions >> Halsey v Milton Keynes General NHS Trust & Anor v Joy & Anor [2004] EWHC 90029 (Costs) (11 May 2004)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Costs/2004/90029.html
Cite as: [2004] EWHC 90029 (Costs)
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This summary of a judgment has been obtained from the Supreme Court Costs Office pages on the HM Courts Service web site. The citation used by BAILII is not an officially approved citation. The full text of the judgment may have an official Neutral Citation issued by the court, and may be available elsewhere on BAILII.
No.12 of 2004
Halsey v Milton Keynes General NHS Trust & Steel v Joy & Halliday
11 May 2004
Court of Appeal - Lord Laws and Dyson LJJ
In this important ruling the court used two "test" cases to found some general and very significant dicta as to the extent to which mediation could be ordered in the course of ongoing litigation, and the consequences of the failure by one party to comply with an order for such mediation in terms of costs at the end of the case.
The court held that European jurisprudence meant that the court could not order mediation as this would be infringing the parties rights, but nevertheless they should continue to adopt a "robust" attitude to directing mediation, since there were evident advantage to its use.
The court also ruled that a party who refused to go to mediation should not automatically be condemned in costs if otherwise successful in the litigation. The burden of showing that it was unreasonable for a successful party who had refused or failed to go to mediation should have all his costs lay firmly on the person making that allegation.
The court then applied the principles which it had enunciated to the facts of the two cases, concluding in both cases that there was no justification for reducing the costs ordered in favour of the successful party due to its failure to go to mediation.