Appeal against case management decision

Shah and another v Breed and another [2013] EWHC 232 (QB), [2013] All ER (D) 191 (Feb); NLJ 1 March

An appeal from a costs judge is not a re-hearing. The proper approach is that the appeal should be allowed if the court was satisfied that the decision had been wrong. The issue was whether the judge had reached a decision which was within the ambit of reasonable decisions open to him on the facts of the case. Further, given that the assessment was a case management decision, the court should not interfere with decisions within it taken by a costs judge who had applied the correct principles and who had taken into account matters that should have been taken into account and left out of account matters which had been irrelevant, unless it was satisfied that the decisions had been so plainly wrong that they had to be regarded as outside the generous ambit of discretion entrusted to the judge.