Protective costs order

R (A and others) (Disputed Children) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWHC 2494 (Admin)

A number of applications for judicial review had been commenced in relation to the issue of how to deal with applicants for asylum or immigration who appeared to be older than they were. The relevance of this issue was that children under 18 received more favourable treatment than adults. An application for a Group Litigation Order (GLO) had been rejected, but the court had agreed to case manage the applications together and to treat them in many ways as though they were subject to a GLO. The Secretary of State had conceded that most of the applications were well-founded, but there remained to be tried a few issues of principle and the claims for damages of all those whose cases had been conceded. The judge held that two of the cases were appropriate to be tried as lead cases. The claimant in one of the two cases applied for a Protective Costs Order, arguing that the issues which the case would decide were important issues of principle which the public interest required to be tried, and that it would be unfair if the claimant were not to succeed that the damages to which he was undoubtedly entitled should be diminished by the set-off of the Secretary of State’s costs of the issues on which the claimant failed.