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A man is entitled to the costs of an appeal against a garda taxi licence refusal decision which was later reversed, the High Court ruled. In the past licensing matters have never attracted costs orders but in a judgment, Mr Justice Micheál O’Higgins said the law was not intended to differentiate between civil and licensing proceedings when it came to awarding costs.-- Varinder Singh is an Indian national who came here in June 2010 and in 2012 he obtained a small public service vehicle licence entitling him to drive a taxi for five years. -- In 2017, it was renewed for a further five years. In the meantime, his residence card was revoked and he failed to challenge that in the courts. -- In May 2022 however, he was granted permission to remain provided he got employment or set up a business whereby he was not a burden on the State. -- In August 2022, the gardai wrote to him saying his taxi licence would not be renewed a third time because the Minister for Justice was of the view that his marriage was one of convenience and he was not a fit person to hold a licence. -- He lodged an appeal against the refusal to the District Court and during the proceedings, the gardai withdrew the objection against renewal saying they had learned that he had been granted permission to remain in May.Mr Singh applied to the court for his costs but the District Court judge ruled that she was not dealing with civil proceedings and was instead exercising a licensing jurisdiction. She therefore did not have the power to award costs to either party and declined Mr Singh's application “maybe with regret”. Mr Singh brought High Court proceedings challenging that decision. The gardai opposed the challenge. Mr Justice O'Higgins, in his judgment reversing the District Court decision, said it seemed to him there were "sufficient pointers" within the 2015 Legal Services Regulation Act, which deals with costs of civil proceedings, to indicate that, when conferring upon all courts a power to award costs, it was not intended to differentiate between licensing and civil proceedings. He had come to the view that the meaning of “civil proceedings” contended for by Mr Singh - namely any inter partes proceedings not including criminal proceedings - constituted the plain meaning of the words chosen by the Oireachtas. Mr Singh's definition was readily understandable by lawyers and non-lawyers alike and was supported by the language and purpose of a number of parts of the Act, he said. This established "a wide and general power to award costs in civil proceedings across our system of courts", he said.By agreement with the parties, he remitted the matter back to the District Court for further consideration.
Fair play. Lawyers don't generally work for nothing.
Yeah, you'd have to slip me a few quid to be pro Bono...
