Our December winner!

Winner of our Best Contribution award for December is Nick Tucker of the Queensland bar who sent in this:

“Having recently been involved in a matter under ss 117AB and 117(2A) it struck me that the FLB really does not deal with costs properly. You assume that costs arguments won't get up. Frankly that's not true, in fact in a recent case of mine costs were all that separated the client who won from a practical defeat. My suggestion is that rather than assuming that 117(1) will override costs arguments you need to ensure practitioners are aware of all the arguments and case law. In many cases it is my view that costs arguments don't get up because practitioners don't know how to argue them in such a way as to ensure that 117(1) only applies when it should.”

We had a good think about this and decided that Nick had a point. While not wishing to encourage members to get their hopes up for a costs order or to run their cases with that expectation in mind we have amended our costs section in Chapter 8 by expanding our summary of the relevant statutory provisions - with extracts from the leading cases on costs. This will appear this month as part of our December quarter update.