Roads & Traffic Authority v Cremona S6/2002 [2002] HCATrans 404 (19 August 2002)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry

Sydney No S6 of 2002

B e t w e e n -

ROADS & TRAFFIC AUTHORITY

Applicant

and

MINNA MAARIT CREMONA

Respondent

Summons

KIRBY J

(In Chambers)

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT SYDNEY ON MONDAY, 19 AUGUST 2002, AT 9.31 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

MR A. PORTHOUSE: I appear for the applicant. (instructed by the Crown Solicitor for the State of New South Wales)

MR B.M. TOOMEY, QC: If it please your Honour, I appear with my learned friend, MS M.A. KUMAR, for the respondent. (instructed by Riley Gray-Spencer)

HIS HONOUR: Yes.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour. This matter is before your Honour, a summons seeking that some affidavits be included in the application book for special leave. Those affidavits - - -

HIS HONOUR: The parties have not been able to get agreement between themselves with their usual co-operation of the legal profession?

MR PORTHOUSE: Apparently not, your Honour. The simple point is that the applicant says that the affidavits are relevant to the question of whether special leave should be granted, particularly on an issue of raising issues of public importance.

HIS HONOUR: Well, you know the principle is that matters that are not on the record will not be received by the Court, matters of evidence will not be received in the hearing of the appeal, so that normally it is irrelevant to have new evidentiary material before the Court on a special leave application which, if special leave were granted, would not be available to be heard on the appeal, but an exception has been stated that the Court will receive material on a special leave application that tends to show the general importance of the case. So I have to address these affidavits applying those principles.

MR PORTHOUSE: That is the basis upon which we put it, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Do you accept those principles?

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Do you accept those principles, Mr Toomey?

MR TOOMEY: Yes, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right. Well, you help me with the affidavits.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour. I will deal firstly with the affidavit of Mr Rossetto.

HIS HONOUR: Mr Rossetto, yes. You read the three affidavits, one of Mariano Rossetto, one of Robert Power - and there is a third, I think, is there not?

MR PORTHOUSE: Rodney James Buckley.

HIS HONOUR: Yes, Rodney James Buckley.

MR TOOMEY: Your Honour, may I say if your Honour were considering the merit of the appeals, we might have objections but I do not take them for the purpose for which your Honour is now looking.

HIS HONOUR: No. I will read them only for the purpose of deciding whether they can be put before the Full Court hearing the special leave application or, I suppose, alternatively whether part of them might be put before the Full Court. Now, take me first to the affidavit of Mr Rossetto. I have glanced at these but I have not read them carefully.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour. The affidavit of Mr Rossetto - - -

HIS HONOUR: First of all, would you tell me what the issue in the special leave application will be?

MR PORTHOUSE: The calculation and the basis upon which future superannuation entitlements should be calculated in personal injury matters.

HIS HONOUR: Is this a death claim?

MR PORTHOUSE: A death claim, yes.

HIS HONOUR: So Mr Cremona has died and that has affected, is it said, the superannuation entitlements to which he would, had he lived, have been entitled?

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes.

HIS HONOUR: That in turn has affected the benefits received by his widow, is it?

MR PORTHOUSE: That is correct.

HIS HONOUR: Who is the plaintiff in the proceedings and the respondent in the application?

MR PORTHOUSE: That is correct.

MR TOOMEY: And children, your Honour.

MR PORTHOUSE: And children, yes.

HIS HONOUR: I see. Yes.

MR PORTHOUSE: At first instance, in the Court of Appeal it was held - at first instance there was a challenge between experts as to the likely earnings of those superannuation contributions and his Honour Justice Dowd accepted the respondent's evidence, the plaintiff at the hearing, that an 11 per cent earning rate would have been achieved. The respondent put two arguments, that a lesser earning rate would have been achieved by those superannuation contributions; alternatively that a 3 per cent discount rate should have been applied in line with the authority of Todorovic v Waller.

What Mr Rossetto has done in this affidavit of 4 April 2002 is to annex a supplementary report in which he calculates the value of the superannuation entitlements based upon the assumption that a 3 per cent discount rate should have applied.

HIS HONOUR: I understand Mr Rossetto gave evidence at the hearing.

MR PORTHOUSE: That is correct.

HIS HONOUR: Did he put this material before the court of trial, or not?

MR PORTHOUSE: Well, this report obviously was not put before the court at trial.

HIS HONOUR: No, but the material in the report, was that put before Justice Dowd, or not?

MR PORTHOUSE: It was put in the sense of it was submitted as a matter of law that a 3 per cent discount should have been applied to calculate the future value of superannuation benefits.

HIS HONOUR: I rather question whether that falls within the principle. I must admit when I glanced at these affidavits - and this is only a preliminary inclination - the only matter that occurred to me to be within that class of case which was pointing to the importance of the issue was in the affidavit of Mr Buckley where he refers to the web site of the forensic accountants which, in a sense, is making a proposition of a professional understanding of the result of the decision and its significance for plaintiffs generally.

Now, that appeared to me to fall within the class of exceptions of the kind that I have seen from time to time in special leave cases and, indeed, I think in a tax case we had a similar affidavit making similar propositions, but Mr Rossetto's affidavit seems simply to be saying the sort of things that he said, or could have said, at the trial and I just do not see how that really goes to why the Court should treat the matter as of general importance, as distinct from something touching upon the issues that will be debated in the Court on the foundation of the record.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour. What it demonstrates - and it is only put on this basis - is the massive difference - - -

HIS HONOUR: Yes, but that is something you are going to have to show on the basis of the record. Perhaps you can do that. No doubt you will try to do that. If you cannot, that is a serious defect in your evidence at the trial in this case, because the Court has set its face against receiving fresh evidence and it has done so, as I understand the ruling of the Court, on constitutional grounds. This is a strict appeal and therefore you cannot receive new evidence. So Mr Rossetto's affidavit seems simply to be going into the substance of Mrs Cremona's claim. Indeed, if you look at the annexure, that is what he deals with.

MR PORTHOUSE: We are not putting it forward as fresh evidence seeking a recalculation of the damages. We are putting it forward to demonstrate that the Todorovic v Waller method produces a massively reduced amount of damages to the method adopted by Justice Dowd and then affirmed by the Court of Appeal. We say that that massive difference is in itself a matter of general public importance when it comes to looking at - - -

HIS HONOUR: But you can say that from the Bar table and/or in your written submissions to the Court.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes.

HIS HONOUR: I am inclined to think that the affidavit of Mr Rossetto falls into the Eastman principle.

MR PORTHOUSE: If the Court pleases.

HIS HONOUR: Yes. Well, take me to the affidavit of Mr Power.

MR PORTHOUSE: Mr Power's affidavit - - -

HIS HONOUR: He did not give evidence at the trial.

MR PORTHOUSE: He did not give evidence, no. We say his affidavit falls within the general area that your Honour has already identified of stating practice and understanding in the industry, having followed the decision in Cremona, both at first instance and then as it fell in the Court of Appeal. Mr Power has stated that he has expertise as a financial planner. He has assisted in advising on investment for superannuation and other funds and in preparing reports for litigation.

HIS HONOUR: Yes, I will just take the time to read this affidavit.

MR PORTHOUSE: Thank you.

HIS HONOUR: Well, having read the affidavit of Mr Power, my impression of it is that it too is addressed to the issues that were debated before the primary judge. It is concerned with the way in which you should approach the calculation which was in issue in the case and it complains about the difficulty of implementing that calculation. That, it seems to me, is something you have to fight out at the trial and it was of the essence of your resistance to the approach which apparently found favour that you had to afford an evidentiary foundation of the kind which you are now trying to put before the High Court. So I feel this also runs into the Eastman principle.

The disclaimer at the end indicate - Freud would have said a lot about that last paragraph. This is something in the subconscious of the deponent, Mr Power, which is troubling him and which he feels he has to acknowledge but squash. I mean, all of these seem to be matters of substantive fact and it may be that they are legitimate complaints, but in so far as you cannot advance them to the High Court on the basis of the evidence that was before the trial judge, I just do not think you are entitled to put a new factual foundation to advance the case further on this application. That might be something that will come out in future cases.

MR PORTHOUSE: We would say that it does raise an issue of public importance in that it demonstrates in the industry a difficulty which will now present itself to fund managers and like people in terms of trying to quantify, in determining what assumption should be used - - -

HIS HONOUR: But that is something you can argue before the High Court on the application by reference to what was before Justice Dowd. Presumably this was the thrust of Mr Rossetto's evidence, or some of it, when the matter was at trial. Did you raise this in evidence at trial?

MR PORTHOUSE: We say that it is a legal proposition. It is a matter of legal principle - - -

HIS HONOUR: I realise that.

MR PORTHOUSE: - - - the adoption of the 3 per cent discount rate. As to whether the 3 per cent discount rate or the method of adducing competing expert evidence to determine what the earning rate should be, the 3 per cent discount rate we say does not require expert evidence in that sense. It is the adoption of the Todorovic v Waller discount rate and you apply it to whatever the contributions are and you come to a determined sum, which we say is within the principle of Todorovic v Waller in preventing the assessment of future loss in personal injury cases in every case becoming a forensic exercise between actuaries and experts.

HIS HONOUR: Well, it was a semi-arbitrary fixation of a principle by this Court in order to secure substantive justice in all cases.

MR PORTHOUSE: That is correct. We say that what the - - -

HIS HONOUR: It has been criticised on that basis, as a matter of fact, but I think it was a unanimous decision of the Court, was it not?

MR TOOMEY: Yes.

HIS HONOUR: When you can get a unanimous decision on such a matter, it is an achievement that the Court would not lightly throw away, I would think.

MR PORTHOUSE: We say that what you get from Mr Power's affidavit is directed directly to that question of public importance in terms of the efficiency and certainty - - -

HIS HONOUR: But that is a matter of advocacy and you have the foundation in Todorovic and that does not seem to me to be advanced by posing new evidentiary material that says, "This is very difficult for us to do." If it is the law, difficult or not, they have just got to do their best. If it was difficult to do, then that may be something you should have tried to establish at the trial. Did you try to do that by evidence, or did you simply latch onto Todorovic and say it is just misconceived?

MR PORTHOUSE: We said it was misconceived and - - -

HIS HONOUR: Did you seek to put evidence before the trial judge, assuming it was not misconceived, that this would be a very difficult task and disruptive for the industry to have to try to calculate individually in each case?

MR PORTHOUSE: I have not checked all the transcript, but I do not believe we did.

HIS HONOUR: If you did not put it at trial, how can you put it in the High Court in the face of Mickelberg and Eastman? That is the question. Now, you know my view on this is different and I adhere to my view, but the Court has and repeatedly applies the principle in Mickelberg.

MR PORTHOUSE: I have to come back to the central proposition, which is that - I am probably starting to repeat myself - - -

HIS HONOUR: I could understand if you were to have an affidavit from Professor Power saying, "I have read the judgment of the Court of Appeal and of the trial judge. If that judgment is to bind people who are financial planners, it will involve them doing this and that, and that will take this and that amount of time and gathering this and that material."

Now, I think that might well be a matter which would indicate the practicalities of the suggested new principle, but that would be met by the respondent by saying, "Well, if it is so difficult, you should have tried to prove that at the trial." And if you did not do it on this occasion, you will get another occasion. The other occasion will be the occasion on which the High Court will have to deal with it with the benefit of a finding by the trial judge and a review of that finding by an intermediate appellate court, which is not going to be something we would have on this application.

MR PORTHOUSE: I suppose the distinction we would draw is between whether that sort of evidence that your Honour is talking about is the sort of evidence you would lead on a trial basis in any particular one-off case, that this is all too hard. We would say that is really the policy question which should be the subject of review by the High Court. If I could just read quickly one passage from Todorovic v Waller which is from the judgment of his Honour Justice Brennan. This appears at page 479 where his Honour said:

The method of assessing damages for future economic loss without encumbering trials with inquiries incompatible with the efficient discharge of the courts' functions necessitates the adoption of a discount rate which is likely in the generality of cases to result in an award which accords with the legal principle of compensation.

Now, we would say that it is not really practicable at a trial level to be leading evidence in every case that the whole job is too hard. That, we say, is the policy question which the High Court should determine as to whether a particular method of calculating loss is going to impose on the Court's imponderable burdens and the very fact of the length of the trial in Cremona and the amount of time that was devoted on this question and the evidence that was led from experts and the time that has been taken, both at trial level and in the Court of Appeal, in determining the quantification of superannuation on the basis of expert evidence, as opposed to the arbitrary use of a discount rate, in itself proves the point, we say.

HIS HONOUR: You will have that point available to you and you will not need additional evidence to make. I am just trying to be loyal to the principle of the Court in Mickelberg and Eastman. I know if I am not and allow these affidavits, other Justices who may be sitting on the special leave panel will get upset because they have protested at the endeavour to raise, in the guise of important evidence, evidentiary facts which supplement the evidence at the trial, which they feel is constitutionally forbidden. You have to keep this in mind, that even if you got it in on the special leave application, you will not have it on the appeal.

MR PORTHOUSE: We appreciate that point, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Therefore, I have to judge its admissibility on how it is useful to the Court, because if it is not available on the appeal, then it only has a very, very limited utility, and that is to show the importance of the case. Now, I just do not think you are going to need evidence of the kind that Professor Power gives to advance the sort of issue that you are putting. You can point to the transcript. It is either a good point or a bad point. You will say adhere to the semi-arbitrary but very practical approach that was taken in Todorovic. Mr Toomey will say this is not a legislature; this is a court and you will deal with the evidence. If you wanted evidence, the place for you to put the evidence was at trial.

MR PORTHOUSE: I have nothing additional to put to what I have already put, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Yes. Now, what about Mr Buckley? Mr Buckley is the one who refers to the homepage. Just let me take a moment to read this more carefully. I am reading the affidavit of Rodney James Buckley. At the moment, subject to hearing what Mr Toomey has to say, I would be inclined to allow you to put before the special leave Bench the paragraphs up to paragraph 15. I think after that it is purely argumentative, but before that it seems to be - this is not the insurer. You are for another insurer, are you not?

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, that is correct.

HIS HONOUR: And this is a manager of a claims department of an insurance company who is stating what he understands plaintiffs to be saying and doing and commentators to be observing and his estimate of what impact this is going to have on insurers.

MR PORTHOUSE: Yes, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: I would be inclined, subject to Mr Toomey's right to challenge it, to allow up to 15, but from there on it is argumentative. I think that is something you are just going to have to deal with in your time limit from the Bar table. You could probably - and it is not at all infrequent nowadays - tender the web site and tender the article anyway as argumentative material, but I think it is relevant, as I understand the principle, to allow an insurance claims manager to put those matters in an evidentiary form on the basis of importance.

So I would be inclined to reject the affidavit of Mr Rossetto and Mr Power and to allow those paragraphs of the affidavit of Mr Buckley but to disallow the paragraphs from 16 to the end. I would be of that view on the footing of the principles which I expressed at the outset, which I take to be common ground, and of my understanding of those principles and application in this case. Now, Mr Toomey, what would be your response to that?

MR TOOMEY: Your Honour, may I say this, that we would, with respect, agree with your Honour that there would be nothing to stop the applicant from putting before the applications Court essentially the material that is here, partly because it would be merely stressing what already will be before the Court in so far as it suggests that it is important that the result of the Cremonan methodology, to use their term, gives a result five times as much. That arises out of this case because the applicant's case before Justice Dowd and before the Court of Appeal was that you simply took the amount of the contribution which it had been found the deceased would have made, reduced it to dollars a week and then multiplied it out on the Todorovic v Waller basis with no regard to the proved return which would have been likely and the proved taxation benefits of superannuation.

HIS HONOUR: You are beginning to make this sound a very interesting case, Mr Toomey.

MR TOOMEY: Well, your Honour, it may be, but it was simply a question of fact the way it was run below. But, your Honour, the result was that the defendant contended for 335,000 or thereabouts and the plaintiff contended for and recovered about 1.8 million. So they do not need anyone to go on affidavit to say that the result is that you get five times as much because that is what happened.

HIS HONOUR: Yes.

MR TOOMEY: Furthermore, your Honour, in so far as it is said on affidavit - - -

HIS HONOUR: But if I can explain my tentative view. The fact that another experienced claims manager of a major insurer comes along and says, "This is the talk of the town in times when plaintiffs are having a hard time is something which every plaintiff's lawyer is talking about and it is not going to be ignored because it is on the web sites and it is going to lead to a lot of extra work in calculating" - now, I can tell you that is not going to add a lot, but we have received evidence of that kind in the past.

MR TOOMEY: Your Honour, can I say this. We would have no objection to that being said from the Bar table. We would say nothing about it being said. We would concede it. We wrote to the applicants in June and again in August and said, "Please tell us what the basis of these affidavits is so that we can consider them." We did not get a reply to either letter. So far as such a statement goes, we, of course, would say nothing about because, with great respect, it is axiomatic. If such a change is made in the common law - and this is the common law - of course plaintiffs are going to take advantage of it and we will concede that in virtually every case - although I might say in fewer cases than one would expect - this methodology is being adopted. There is no doubt it would increase verdicts. Your Honour is already seized of the way in which it does that.

HIS HONOUR: Yes. It is just that we have received, in special leave applications, affidavits from tax officials and solicitors which express the importance of the matter within the profession and that has been received and I am trying to be consistent. I disagree with the Mickelberg and Eastman principle but I am bound to apply it.

MR TOOMEY: I read your Honour's judgment.

HIS HONOUR: On that basis, I believe that the added authenticity that is given by Mr Buckley's affidavit, as distinct from saying it from the Bar table, is that he is a manager of another insurer and this is his statement of its importance. So I am inclined to allow those paragraphs to go before the Court, but, as you say, they do not add very much to what is self-evident.

MR TOOMEY: Yes. Your Honour, could I just say something about costs?

HIS HONOUR: Yes.

MR TOOMEY: As I say, as is before the Court in the affidavit of Mr Kozub, my instructing solicitor, we twice wrote asking for an explanation as to what these materials were sought to do and we never received an answer.

HIS HONOUR: Well, you had a two and a half third's success.

MR TOOMEY: Yes, your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Thank you very much. What do you say, first of all, about Mr Toomey's uncharacteristically generous offer that you can simply say these things from the Bar table? Is that enough, or do you want to have those paragraphs of Mr Buckley's affidavit?

MR PORTHOUSE: I think we would adopt what your Honour has said, that there is an added authenticity from those remarks. There is an added authenticity having those materials in evidence rather than simply making statements from the Bar table.

HIS HONOUR: So you want them?

MR PORTHOUSE: We want them.

HIS HONOUR: Well, you can have those paragraphs, but what do you say about costs? Substantively you have lost two affidavits and half of one and you were asked to indicate what you wanted to say. Why did you not tell them? Maybe this hearing could have been avoided.

MR PORTHOUSE: I do not have instructions as to why there was no response.

HIS HONOUR: I suppose you can say that you have had a measure of success. You have got something. The choice before me is whether I simply order that the costs of this application, being an aspect of the hearing of the special leave application, be costs in the special leave application or whether I order that you pay half the costs of the respondent of this application.

MR PORTHOUSE: I would submit that on the basis we have been at least partially successful and that in itself demonstrates it was appropriate to bring the application on, that costs should be costs in the application.

HIS HONOUR: Yes, very well. Thank you.

The application before the Court relates to three affidavits which have been filed by the Roads and Traffic Authority ("the applicant"). The affidavits have been filed in support of an application by the applicant for special leave to appeal to this Court from a judgment of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. That application arises out of a decision of the Court of Appeal concerning the calculation of superannuation-related losses. The application for special leave will in due course come on for hearing before a panel of this Court. It will be determined on the record of the evidence and other materials adduced in the courts below.

Affidavits in special leave hearings

This Court has repeatedly stated that, for the purpose of the disposition of appeals, it will not receive fresh evidence beyond the record of the courts below: see Victorian Stevedoring and General Contracting Co Pty Ltd v Dignan [1931] HCA 34; (1931) 46 CLR 73 at 109; Stuart v The Queen [1959] HCA 27; (1959) 101 CLR 1 at 4-5; Mickelberg v The Queen [1989] HCA 35; (1989) 167 CLR 259 at 269; Eastman v The Queen [2000] HCA 29; (2000) 203 CLR 1 at 23-26 [67]- [78], 32-41 [103]-[133], 59-64 [181]-[194]. However, it has permitted applicants for special leave, or those opposing the grant of special leave, to place before the Court evidence which tends to show that the issue for decision in the Court is, or is not, an important one. Indeed, if the demonstration of the significance of an issue in a special leave application requires the proof of facts, the Court has made it plain that such facts should be proved by affidavit and not purportedly stated in the course of oral argument from the Bar table. This procedure gives a party which wishes to contest the facts the chance to test them or to rebut them with evidence of its own.

The parties were not in disagreement about the foregoing principles. They were disagreement about the admissibility of the affidavits. My task is, therefore, to apply those principles to the affidavits. I have been assisted to do so by the submissions of counsel, both in writing and orally.

Application of the principles

For reasons which I sufficiently indicated during argument, I would reject the affidavit of Mariano Rossetto and Robert Power. Each of those affidavits, in my opinion, simply endeavours to place before the Court new factual material which could, and should, have been placed before the trial judge if it was considered relevant to the calculation of the respondent's damages in respect of the loss of superannuation benefits. I do not believe that those affidavits go, as such, to the issue of the importance of the matter which will be decided in the special leave application. It is necessary not only to keep in mind the limited purpose for which the Court will receive affidavits on a special leave application but also the fact that, even if special leave is granted, the affidavit material would not be available on the return of the appeal which will be decided on the record: Eastman v The Queen [2000] HCA 29; (2000) 203 CLR 1 at 111 [340].

The affidavit of Mr Rodney Buckley, falls into a different class. Mr Buckley is the manager, compulsory third party claims, of AAMI Limited, a licensed insurer under the motor accidents legislation of New South Wales. That is not the insurer of the applicant. In his affidavit, in its opening section, Mr Buckley draws attention to the web site of a firm of forensic accountants indicating the large changes that are alleged to have come about since the decision of the Supreme Court in the present case (Cremona). He also draws attention to an article in which the application of the principles established in Cremona is said to be described. Each of these documents could, I think, be tendered on the special leave application as an indication of the importance of the matter to be debated.

Counsel for the respondent fairly pointed out that the issue of importance is not greatly advanced by Mr Buckley's affidavit. However, a certain measure of authenticity to the statements in Mr Buckley's affidavit is added by the fact that he holds a position as a claims manager in a large insurer that is not the insurer of the applicant. On this footing, I consider that paragraphs 1 to 15 of Mr Buckley's affidavit, dealing (for the most part) with practical consequences of the decision if it stands, fall into the exception to the rule established in Mickelberg and Eastman. That evidence should, therefore, be available to the applicant on the special leave application. The balance of Mr Buckley's affidavit, being from paragraph 16 to 20, relates to matters of the same class as the affidavits of Mr Rossetto and Mr Power. Those paragraphs are rejected.

The affidavit should be re-engrossed to delete the excluded paragraphs and to confine the affidavit of Mr Buckley to paragraphs 1 to 15. That affidavit may be filed and will be received by the panel of the Court hearing the special leave application.

Costs

A question arises as to the costs of this application. Counsel for the respondent pointed out that, some time before this hearing, his solicitors had asked the solicitors for the applicant to indicate the matters that they wished to place before the High Court in support of the application with a view to securing agreement about a way to do so. No reply was received to this request. However, I think that the position of the parties had by that stage reached a deadlock. The applicant wished to have the benefit of affidavits. The respondent was, at most, prepared to allow a statement of some kind to be made to the Court. The applicant has not succeeded in respect of most of the affidavit material and the respondent has succeeded in resisting most, but not all, of that material.

Orders

The proper order for costs is that the applicant should pay half of the respondent's costs of this application. The order which I make is the application is refused except to the extent indicated. In the event that special leave is granted, the applicant must pay half of the respondent's costs of the application. However, in the event that special leave is refused by the Court, the applicant must pay the entirety of the respondent's costs. I certify for the attendance of counsel in chambers.

You will get at least half your costs, Mr Toomey, but if you win the special leave, you will get the lot.

MR TOOMEY: Thank you, your Honour. I have got that, your Honour. I am very sharp on costs.

HIS HONOUR: I knew if I had not given you that, you would be on your feet.

AT 10.20 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED