McCloud judges her opening line just right

The latest judgment from Master McCloud in Hadley v Przybylo will not have cheered many claimant lawyers, but for killer lines it is up there with the best.

McCloud disallowed a significant chunk of the claimant’s costs and seemed almost surprised in her introduction that a costs judgment had proven to be so interesting.

‘On rare occasions,’ she opened. ‘Like the transit of Venus or a triple Jovian eclipse but far less predictably, costs budgeting ceases to be a cause of judicial ennui, and raises instead something of interest legally. This case determines one such specific issue in relation to the principles of costs budgeting under the Civil Procedure Rules.’

After imposing ADR on both parties, just one disputed issue remained: the ability to claim for case management meetings. Claimant and defendant each insisted they were correct and that their position had been supported by various masters in the past.

This prompted Master McCloud, a transgender judge, to describe the situation as a ‘necessarily something of a ‘judgment of Solomon’, before adding in brackets: ‘I do not intend thereby to self-identify as Solomon, lest I be thought to dip into areas of social controversy currently causing anxiety in some corners of the media.’