When may a court make a private complainant bear the costs that arose from the private complaint application procedure?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
In a practice file of this kind we read the private complaint application and the decision the court made on it, together with any revocation of an earlier decision, because the specified decision or revocation is a condition for the ruling described here on costs arising from the application procedure; the provision separately permits orders to pay the costs the suspect bore or will bear in the private complaint procedure, such as counsel-retention fees, on the court's own initiative or the suspect's application. We also read the receipts and invoices for filing fees and counsel fees, since those show whether a cost arose from the application procedure.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading treats the trigger as closed: the court may, by a ruling, make the private complainant bear all or part of the costs 'arising from the application procedure', but only where the decision the provision cross-refers to in the earlier provision on private complaint applications has been made, or the revocation it cross-refers to has occurred.
Another reading marks the limit of that reach: the costs named are those born of the application procedure itself, so money spent on the investigation or on the prosecution that followed is not within what this ruling may shift, and the provision leaves the scope and procedure of payment to Supreme Court Rules.
Your judgment
Once one of the two triggers has occurred, what in the file shows which recorded costs belong to the application procedure rather than to the proceedings that followed?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to add or remove a trigger, if the Supreme Court Rules made for it define the scope and procedure of payment, or if a court decision explains how 'arising from the application procedure' is read.