County Court scales up on costs – Order 63A.

Are you a County Court litigator charging scale? If so, congratulations, you just got a pay rise.
Commiserations on the other hand if you a County Court litigant already rueful about rejecting a shrewd offer of compromise. Your burden just got heavier.

The County Court of Victoria has amended its cost rule, Order 63A. For beneficiaries of scale costs (lawyers and successful litigants especially) this is good news.

There are two key changes.

The first is the axing of the County Court’s own stand-alone scale. Instead, the County Court Civil Procedure Rules now apply the Supreme Court’s scale but discounts it a uniform 20 per cent. Take, for example, the scale allowances for a solicitor’s time. Under the former County Court scale, a solicitor’s time was allowable at $277 per hour for attending a conference and $546 per half day instructing in Court.

That same solicitor’s time under the new County Court regime is now worth $296 per hour (ie 80 per cent of the Supreme Court rate of $370 per hour). As is in the Supreme, costs are now claimable on an hourly basis and also in 6 minute units but the half day rate is gone.

The second key change is the end of ‘party and party costs’. The new default measure of costs is ‘standard basis’ (which is really ‘solicitor and client’ costs by another name). (Indemnity costs remain as the juicer alternative.) This change echoes the Supreme Court’s costs reforms of last year (as to which see my blog of the time here).

Some other features of the new County Court costs regime:

  1. Costs of pleading amendments (whether with or without leave) are now costs in the proceeding unless the Court otherwise orders (CCR 63A.17);
  2. Similarly, costs of interlocutory applications will be costs in the proceeding absent an order to the contrary (CCR 63A 20.1) (Incidentally, this rule has no direct Supreme Court equivalent);
  3. Interlocutory costs orders are payable “forthwith” (CCR 63A.03(2)) but unless the Court otherwise orders those costs may not be taxed until the entire proceeding is completed (CCR 63A 20.1). (This is like to have a glacial effect on the concept of “forthwith”).
  4. The entire Order 63A continues to be ostensibly premised on the “County Court scale of costs” as if there was still such a document. But there simply isn’t. Instead CCR 1.13 gives legal force to the mirage by providing “’County Court scale of costs’ means a fee, charge or amount that is 80 per cent of the applicable rate set out in Appendix A to Chapter 1 of the Rules of the Supreme Court.”
  5. The new rules and costs apply from 7 October 2014 irrespective of when the proceeding involved commenced (CCR 63A.83).

This article first appeared on Paul Duggan’s blog pauldugganbarrister.com


Paul Duggan – CommBar profile

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