The High Court has granted a third party costs order against the parents of a man who brought a negligence claim for nearly £1m against his former school for failing to prevent him being bullied.
The High Court has granted a third party costs order against the parents of a man who brought a negligence claim for nearly £1m against his former school for failing to prevent him being bullied.
The case of Thomson v Berkhamsted Collegiate School [2009] EWHC 2374 (QB) concerned a 25-year-old unemployed university graduate who tried to sue the private school, which he attended between 1994 and 2002, for injury, loss and damages. He dropped the case two weeks into the trial. The defendant had incurred estimated costs in excess of £250,000.
Delivering his judgment, Mr Justice Blake said that while this was “a case of family funding”, there was “a quantity of material indicating that the parents were not merely funders but were directly concerned with the facts of the claim, and promoting the remedies that they identified”.
He revisited the principles on third party costs as set out in Dymocks Franchise Systems (NSW) Pty Ltd v Todd [2005] 4 All ER 195.
