West Bay Management Ltd (t/a “sandals Royal Bahamian”) and Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union v Attorney General and Bahamas Hotel Maintenance and Allied Workers Union

• Jurisdiction: Bahamas
• Judge: Meeres, D.R.
• Judgment Date: 30 August 2013
• Court: Supreme Court (Bahamas)
• Docket Number: PUB/jrv 37 of 2006
• Date: 30 August 2013

Supreme Court

Meeres, Dep. Registrar

PUB/jrv 37 of 2006

West Bay Management Limited (t/a “Sandals Royal Bahamian”) and Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union

and

Attorney General and Bahamas Hotel Maintenance and Allied Workers Union

Appearances:

Camille Cleare and Feron Bethel for the first applicant.

Havey Tynes for the second applicant.

Obie Ferguson for the second respondent.

Civil practice and procedure - Order that Bill of costs be set aside — Whether an application for the taxation of costs can be made if there is no order made by a supreme court judge — Whether the privy council has jurisdiction to order cost in the supreme court — Superior court assumes jurisdiction — Rules of the supreme court order 2 rule 1, order 2 rule 2, order 59 riles 1(1) and 3(1).

Meeres, D.R.

FACTS.

1 This is an application by the first applicant, under the inherent Jurisdiction of the Court, and pursuant to Order 2, rule 1 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, 1978, for an Order that the Bill of Costs, issued herein on the 30th day of May, 2011 by the second Respondent be set aside and/or struck out on the grounds that:

• i. The Bill of Costs herein was irregularly issued pursuant to the order of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council dated March 28, 2011 where “IT IS ORDERED that the first and second respondent (applicants) be jointly and severally liable for the appellant's costs before the Judicial Committee and below to be assessed if not agreed”.

• ii. No order for costs was ever made in the Supreme Court in this action with respect to costs and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council does not have original jurisdiction in this action to make such an order; hence, the second respondent cannot rely on the aforementioned Order of the Privy Council to predicate the purported taxation of costs in the Supreme Court;

• iii. By its conduct, the plaintiff is seeking to circumvent the requirement under the Rules of the Court that an order for costs made in the Supreme Court is a pre-requisite to its entitlement for any costs being taxed by the Registrar of the said Court;

• iv. The plaintiffs' conduct is frivolous and/or vexatious and wrong and amounts to an abuse of the process of the Courts as well as an affront to the Court's authority;

2 The first applicant is also requesting that the costs of and occasioned by this application and thrown away be the intended first applicant's costs to be taxed if not agreed.

3 Counsel for the second respondent contends that the Summons filed by West Bay Management is seeking to have the Deputy Registrar review the Order of the Privy Council. He submits that this is ironic because at the Court of Appeal both the first and second applicants made application to the Court of Appeal that their costs should be also costs incurred at the Supreme Court.

4 It is noted at paragraph 29 of a judgment written in this case by the Honourable Sir Burton P.C. Hall, Chief Justice as he then was, on the 24th September, 2008,

“Having heard counsel on the question, I make no order as to costs. For reasons which need not be stated, the issue does not arise in favour of the Attorney General, counsel for whom, in fact, seeks no such order. While counsel for Maintenance presses his application against Sandals, I am not persuaded that I should make such an order as Sandals was drawn into a dispute between the rival unions, which dispute they did not initiate. On the other hand, having regard to the strong views that I have taken as to the essential merits of Catering's claim, I make no order for costs against them in favour of Maintenance and, in those...