MAURITIUS Law and Practice Contributed by: André Robert and Mushtaq Namdarkhan, BLC Robert & Associates
11. Costs 11.1 Responsibility for Paying the Costs of Litigation During litigation, each party bears its ongoing costs. The general rule is that the losing party pays the winning party’s costs. In certain circumstances, the court may consider that the justice of the case requires that no order be made as to costs, eg, where the winning party has not conducted its case diligently or where both a claim and a counterclaim have succeeded, or where the par- ties reached an amicable settlement early in the proceedings – this is a matter left to the discre- tion of the judge. The court may also order: • a party to pay amounts determined by the judge for unreasonable conduct (eg, repeated applications for extension of time); and/or • a legal representative to pay wasted costs orders in cases of improper, unreasonable or negligent acts or omissions. Costs would include the counsel and attorney costs of the winning party, court filing costs, costs relating to attendance of witnesses and costs of ancillary pre-trial applications. Most of these items are subject to very low prescribed amounts set out in the relevant court rules such as the Legal Fees and Costs Rules 2000 and the Supreme Court (Electronic Filing of Docu- ments) Rules 2012. Therefore, in practice, the costs recovered are far from the actual legal expenses of the winning party. Exceptions to that are: (i) applications made in international arbitration matters, whereby the Supreme Court (International Arbitration Claims) Rules 2013 may allow a winning party to recover close to its real costs on a standard basis or indemnity basis;
10.5 Court-Imposed Conditions on Granting an Appeal Appeals before the Supreme Court in the exer- cise of its appellate jurisdiction of lower courts or before the Court of Civil Appeal are subject to furnishing an amount of about MUR25,000 as security for costs. Appeals before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are subject to furnishing MUR150,000 as security for costs. 10.6 Powers of the Appellate Court After an Appeal Hearing An appellate court may: • dismiss the appeal if none of the grounds of appeal have merit; • quash the lower court judgment if one or more grounds of appeal are well taken, and itself draw any inferences of fact and give any judgment and make any order which ought to have been made, and make such further order as the case may require; • quash the lower court judgment if one or more grounds of appeal are well taken and, if it thinks fit, order that the judgment or order appealed be set aside, and that a new trial be started (often before a differently constituted bench) ‒ a new trial may be ordered on any question without interfering with the finding or decision upon any other question; and • make such order as to the whole or any part of the costs of appeal or in the lower court, as seems just.
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