Suspended Attorney General Stephen Harding faces a bill for more than £88,000 after costs were ordered against him over his failed legal challenge against the Lieutenant Governor.
A disciplinary tribunal is to consider 14 charges of misconduct levelled against Mr Harding, who remains suspended from his £160,000-a-year post.
He issued proceedings for ‘injunctive relief from unlawful disciplinary proceedings’ against Lieutenant Governor Adam Wood, the position of Attorney General being a Crown appointment rather than a government post.
But in November Deemster Rosen rejected the claim on the grounds of Crown immunity, saying the Douglas high court does not have jurisdiction to rule on it or the application for an interim injunction.
The Crown sought costs totalling £88,854.48.
But lawyers acting for Mr Harding argued that no order for costs can be awarded in favour of the Crown unless provided for by statute, which they alleged is not the position in this case.
This was despite the claimant having failed on every significant aspect of his applications – as he had been warned by the defendant – and conceding that costs should ordinarily follow where a claim has been dismissed.
Now Deemster Rosen has ruled that the costs order should be made.
In his judgment, he concluded: ‘The claimant misconceives the logic when he submits that, since the court has found that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the claim against the defendant because of Crown immunity, it has no jurisdiction to award it costs.’
He said that, on the contrary, where an action is wrongly brought against the Crown there is a strong public interest in the claimant bearing those costs, which would otherwise fall on the public purse.
Former high court judge Sir John Royce has been appointed to head up the disciplinary tribunal.
Deemster Rosen accepted that this was an ‘unusual and even exceptional’ case.
He added: ‘The claim should not have been brought and failed as soon as brought by application before the court. It served no useful purpose in the meantime (given that Sir John Royce was ready, willing and able to deal with the matters complained of). The claimant was warned of the grounds on which the claim would be opposed and costs sought, and there was no need for the costs and delay caused.’
It is three years since Mr Harding was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice. He was formally found not guilty on both counts in February last year after the jury failed to reach a verdict at his trial and subsequent retrial.
When Mr Harding launched his legal challenge against the Lieutenant Governor in the high court in October, it emerged that Mr Harding faces a total of 14 allegations of misconduct.
Two of the allegations predate his appointment as Attorney General and relate to breach of duty to the court in relation to his role as government advocate at the winding up hearing of Peel-based Street Heritage Ltd.
It was the February 2010 winding up of Street Heritage that sparked a chain of events that led to Mr Harding’s suspension, criminal trial and acquittal and now the disciplinary case.
The court heard last month that Mr Harding has no wish to return to his post and the threat of disciplinary proceedings had had a debilitating effect on his health.
His advocate Rob Long argued in court that the disciplinary action was unlawful as it was a breach of his client’s terms of employment, and he had been cleared of the same allegations at his criminal trial.