Justice Spies, whose decisions have surfaced in this blog repeatedly,grappled with a group of siblings who suffered delusions as they fought over a $30,000.00 painting. I make no comment about the reasonableness of destroying a sibling relationship for mere money.
In the Newlands decision, the court had earlier found that one brother’s position with respect to a $30,000.00 painting was actually correct. The conclusion was the one brother was to pay the other siblings $30,000.00 and a family painting was his. That is not the point of this particular decision. Rather, it is the astounding fact that the two sides each spent approximately a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees fighting over the rights surrounding the painting.
What was crucial in deciding that the two brothers that failed to recognize at an early stage that their sibling was indeed entitled to purchase the painting for $30,000.00 had caused the parties to waste a combined $500,000.00 for no good financial reason though I am certain emotional and family history played a very large role in the parties’ motivation. When the successful brother asked the court to order costs, the judge carefully looked at all the circumstances. Most importantly the successful brother had made an early offer to settle which in the end reflected almost exactly what the court had done. The court ordered the unsuccessful siblings, out of their own pockets to reimburse almost all of the $250,000.00 spent by the successful brother. Justice Spies held:
“In my view, not ordering them to fully reimburse the successful brother for his legal costs would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.”
Some time ago, the norm was that the estate itself would bear the costs rather than the parties personally but the court has a discretion to order that the parties themselves be personally responsible. In another decision, Tarantino v Galvano, the court looked at the same type of factors and especially the lack of proportionality in deciding that costs should be borne by the contesting parties personally rather than the estate.
