Justice Twomey Slams Ireland’s Prohibitive Legal Costs System

A System on Trial: High Court Judge Condemns ‘Illogical’ Legal Costs

In an excoriating judgment that has sent shockwaves through the Irish legal and insurance sectors, a High Court judge has declared that the country’s system for resolving civil disputes inflicts “injustice” on ordinary citizens by allowing legal costs to dwarf the value of the claims themselves. Mr. Justice Garrett Twomey, in a ruling concerning a minor road traffic accident, described a system where it could cost a litigant €50,000 to resolve a claim worth only €16,500 as something that “defies all logic” and is tantamount to an “irrationality” not seen in any other walk of life.

The case, an appeal in the matter of *Regina Putniene v Brendan McDonald and Others*, has become the unlikely vehicle for a profound and detailed critique of the structural failings that, according to the judge, have made access to justice prohibitively expensive. While ultimately dismissing Ms. Putniene’s claim on its merits, Justice Twomey dedicated the majority of his written judgment to a forensic dissection of the legislative framework that he argues funnels minor disputes into the State’s most expensive courts, with devastating financial consequences for the losing party. He contended that this situation, a “daily occurrence in our courts,” cannot amount to true justice, but rather represents a systemic failure that benefits legal professionals at the direct expense of the public they serve.

The ruling lands amidst a prolonged and often contentious national debate on insurance reform and the high cost of claims in Ireland. While political and industry focus has often been on the level of damages awarded, Justice Twomey’s intervention forcefully redirects the spotlight onto the often-overlooked but colossal component of legal costs. His analysis, supported by data and observations from legal costs experts, suggests that legislative decisions made by the Oireachtas over several decades are the primary drivers of a system he deems fundamentally unfair. By comparing the civil system unfavourably to its criminal counterpart, where minor offences are never heard in the highest courts, he has laid bare a paradox at the heart of Irish jurisprudence, questioning why a citizen’s financial dispute is not afforded the same proportional logic as a criminal matter.

The Anatomy of an ‘Injustice’

The factual matrix of the case itself was unremarkable, a scenario played out on Irish roads every day. On 19th July 2021, a collision occurred between a car driven by Ms. Regina Putniene and a truck driven by Mr. Brendan McDonald on a road between Tipperary town and Bansha. Ms. Putniene claimed for soft tissue injuries, noting in medical reports that she had missed a single day of work. The value of her claim was estimated to be in the region of €16,500 – a figure representing the midpoint between her counsel’s valuation and that of the defendant’s. She lost her case in the Circuit Court and, exercising her right of appeal, brought the matter before the High Court.

It was here that the case transformed from a routine personal injuries action into a landmark commentary. Justice Twomey upheld the Circuit Court’s finding, agreeing with Judge O’Donohoe that, on the balance of probabilities, Ms. Putniene had attempted an unsafe overtaking manoeuvre. In doing so, he applied the conventional legal principle that “costs follow the event,” ordering Ms. Putniene to pay the defendant’s legal fees for both the Circuit Court and the High Court hearings. It was in the articulation of this order that the judge’s profound misgivings about the system came to the fore.

“The reason she suffered an injustice is not because she lost her claim for damages and had costs awarded against her – the objective evidence in the case favoured the defendant,” Justice Twomey wrote. “Instead, the reason Ms. Putniene suffered an injustice is because it is likely to cost her €50,000 or more in legal costs to resolve a claim which was estimated at only €16,500.” He continued with a series of powerful analogies designed to make the absurdity of the situation plain to the public. “This is as illogical as a person paying €50,000 to repair a car worth €16,500, or a person paying €50,000 to buy a property worth €16,500. It is hard to think of any other walk of life where this type of irrationality occurs.”

For the judge, the core issue was not the awarding of costs against an unsuccessful plaintiff, which is a standard feature of adversarial legal systems, but the sheer scale and disproportionality of those costs. The total sum Ms. Putniene would have to pay, combining the defendant’s costs and her own legal fees, would be a multiple of the amount she ever stood to gain. In the court’s view, this outcome could not be reconciled with the concept of justice. “Instead of justice being administered to Ms. Putniene,” he concluded starkly, “she has had an injustice inflicted on her.”

The Legislative Roots of a Flawed System

Justice Twomey did not attribute this state of affairs to the actions of individual lawyers or judges but traced it directly to two specific legislative and structural problems engineered by the Oireachtas. The first, and perhaps most critical, is the establishment of low monetary thresholds for the jurisdiction of the State’s courts. He pointed out that the current laws mean cases of minor value and importance are routinely heard not in affordable courts, but in the most expensive trial court in the land.

He explained the tiered system in stark financial terms. A dispute worth up to €15,000 is heard in the District Court, where legal costs might typically be in the region of one or two thousand euros. However, a claim for just one euro more, at €15,001, must be initiated in the Circuit Court, where costs can escalate significantly, potentially running to a multiple of the claim’s value. The problem becomes even more acute at the next level. For personal injury claims, any case valued at €60,001 or more must be heard, at first instance, in the High Court. Justice Twomey highlighted the prohibitive nature of High Court costs, quoting a former President of the Court, Kearns P., who had described them as such. The potential for costs to spiral into the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of euros for relatively modest claims is, in his view, a direct consequence of these jurisdictional lines.

To illustrate the point, he cited other examples where this structure leads to absurd outcomes, such as an appeal from the Residential Tenancies Board concerning a €500 deposit being heard in the High Court, or a judicial review over an €80 car clamping fee taking up the time and resources of the same senior court. These are not exceptional cases, he argued, but systemic outcomes. Ms. Putniene’s case, an appeal from the Circuit Court, was heard in the High Court by statutory requirement, thereby automatically subjecting a €16,500 dispute to a cost structure designed for the most complex and high-value litigation in the State.

The second pillar of his critique was what he termed the “dramatic reduction in the proportion of affordable courts to hear minor claims.” Citing a previous judgment, he presented startling statistics: in recent decades, there has been a 359% reduction in the number of District Courts relative to the number of High Courts, and a 54% reduction in the number of Circuit Courts relative to the High Court. This structural shift, he argued, has created a bottleneck, concentrating an ever-increasing volume of litigation, including a significant amount of minor litigation, into the most expensive forum. The consequence is that ordinary citizens like Ms. Putniene find their everyday disputes being resolved in a venue where the financial stakes of litigation are catastrophically high.

A Tale of Two Justice Systems: Civil vs. Criminal

One of the most compelling elements of Justice Twomey’s analysis was his comparison between the civil and criminal divisions of the High Court. He argued that if the logic of the civil system were applied to criminal law, it would lead to outcomes universally recognised as preposterous. “For Ms. Putniene, this meant that her minor claim for damages, estimated at €16,500, was heard in the High Court, even though this is the equivalent of a minor crime (say a speeding offence) being heard in the criminal division of the High Court (known as the Central Criminal Court),” he wrote. “This would never happen… because minor criminal matters are never tried in the High Court (which hears only the most serious crimes, such as rape and murder).”

The judge posed a simple but profound question: why does this sensible proportionality exist in the criminal sphere but not in the civil one? He could find no logical explanation for why a minor financial dispute should be escalated to the highest trial court while a minor criminal infraction is kept appropriately at the District Court level. This discrepancy, he suggested, points to a fundamental incoherence in the State’s approach to justice. The primary beneficiaries of this system, he stated bluntly, are legal professionals, whose fees are inflated by the unnecessarily high forum in which cases are heard. “The primary winners from this concentration of litigation in the High Court are lawyers who are paid costs which are out of all proportion to the value of claims,” he wrote. Conversely, “the primary losers are consumers of legal services, who have to pay those legal costs.”

The financial difference for these consumers is not trivial. Justice Twomey estimated that the choice of court can represent a difference of tens of thousands of euros for the litigant. A case heard and resolved in the District Court might cost hundreds or a few thousand euros. The same dispute, forced into the Circuit or High Court by jurisdictional rules, will inevitably cost many thousands, or tens of thousands, more. For Ms. Putniene, the fact that her appeal had to be heard in the High Court was the single factor that transformed a lost claim into a potentially ruinous financial event.

The Principle of Proportionality: A Call for Consistency

Central to Justice Twomey’s legal reasoning was an appeal for a broader application of the principle of proportionality, a concept he argued is vital to the fair administration of justice. He drew heavily on a recent, significant Supreme Court decision, *Delaney v The Personal Injuries Board*, where Collins J. reaffirmed the importance of what is known as ‘internal proportionality’. This principle dictates that damages awarded for personal injuries must be rational and proportionate relative to each other. For example, an award for a minor soft tissue injury must be significantly lower than an award for a life-altering catastrophic injury. This ensures fairness to both plaintiffs and defendants across the spectrum of cases.

Justice Twomey argued compellingly that this vital principle should not be confined solely to the calculation of damages. He questioned whether it was logical for the principle of proportionality to suddenly cease to apply when the court turns from the question of damages to the question of costs. “It seems to this Court,” he reasoned, “that the amount of costs ordered by a court to be paid by a litigant are as much a part of the administration of justice as the amount of any damages ordered to be paid by a litigant.”

A Wider Malaise: Corroborating Evidence

Justice Twomey’s judicial observations do not exist in a vacuum. They align closely with the analysis of legal costs professionals and data from the insurance industry, which paint a picture of a system where costs have become detached from underlying economic realities. Industry sources have long highlighted that party-party legal costs in personal injury actions have been rising at a rate that far outstrips inflation, a trend that is particularly pronounced in the Circuit Court. This has occurred against a backdrop of a significant reduction in the volume of personal injury claims, which has fallen by approximately one-third in recent years. The paradox of falling claim numbers and simultaneously soaring legal costs per case points directly to the systemic issues identified in the *Putniene* judgment.

Experts in the field place significant responsibility on the mechanisms for measuring legal costs. When legal fees are not agreed between the parties, they are determined by a County Registrar (for Circuit Court matters) or a Legal Costs Adjudicator (for High Court matters). These officials, in essence, set the prevailing market rate. Data gathered over the past five years indicates that adjudications from County Registrars in straightforward Circuit Court cases have resulted in plaintiff solicitor professional fees rising by as much as 40%. This suggests that the very bodies tasked with ensuring costs are reasonable have presided over a period of significant inflation, establishing precedents that lawyers then naturally follow.

Legislative changes have also played a direct role. The Legal Service Regulation Act 2015 introduced a new, more detailed format for bills of costs. While intended to improve transparency, one specific provision, Section D, has had the practical effect of adding a substantial, almost automatic, charge to every bill. This section allows for costs incurred *after* a trial or settlement concludes, covering work such as taking up settlement funds and the very act of drawing up the bill of costs itself. This single legislative change is estimated to have added between €2,000 and €3,000 to a standard Circuit Court bill and upwards of €5,000 to a High Court bill almost overnight. This was a decision of the Oireachtas, and it directly contributes to the disproportionate outcomes that Justice Twomey condemned.

Furthermore, the position of defendants, typically insurance companies, when faced with what they consider an excessive bill is fraught with difficulty. The commentary from legal costs experts reveals a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. To challenge a bill through the formal adjudication process is to risk an unfavourable ruling that not only loses the specific battle but also sets a new, higher precedent for future cases. This creates a powerful disincentive to challenge even grossly inflated bills, leading to a system where high costs can become entrenched through a lack of effective opposition. The process is a costly gamble where winning might offer a modest saving, but losing can poison the well for countless future cases.

Another systemic imbalance noted by observers is the asymmetry in cost recovery. When a defendant loses, costs are invariably recovered from the insurer. However, in the majority of cases where a plaintiff loses and has costs awarded against them, like Ms. Putniene, those costs are never pursued or recovered. The process is time-consuming and expensive in itself, and unless the plaintiff is a person of significant means, it is rarely an economic proposition for the defendant. This reality further skews the system, as the financial risk of litigation is not borne equally by both sides, potentially encouraging claims with weaker prospects to be pursued.

The Judgment on the Merits: A Case of ‘He Says/She Says’

Despite his profound critique of the system, Justice Twomey was still bound to adjudicate the specific facts of the appeal before him. The case rested on two irreconcilable accounts of the accident. Ms. Putniene claimed she was driving in a convoy behind a tractor, which had moved into the hard shoulder. She maintained she stayed within her lane when the defendant’s truck, which was behind her, collided with the rear of her car. The defendant’s version was starkly different. He contended that Ms. Putniene had pulled out over the continuous white line to overtake the tractor, saw oncoming traffic, and was forced to brake suddenly and pull back into his lane, giving him no time to avoid the collision.

In a classic ‘he says/she says’ dispute with no independent witnesses, the judge noted that the onus of proof rests squarely on the plaintiff to establish that her version is, on the balance of probabilities, the more likely one. After careful consideration, he found that she had not discharged this onus. He identified two key factors that tipped the balance in favour of the defendant’s account. The first was the objective physical evidence: the damage to the defendant’s truck was on its front right-hand side, while the damage to Ms. Putniene’s car was predominantly on its rear left-hand side. The judge reasoned that this pattern of impact was more consistent with Ms. Putniene’s car returning to the lane from a position on the right (i.e., from over the white line) than it was with a simple rear-end collision within the same lane.

The second factor related to inconsistencies in the plaintiff’s testimony. When shown photographs of the approach to the accident scene, she and her daughter, a passenger in the car, claimed the tractor ahead of them was not visible at a distance of 120 metres but became visible at 100 metres. The judge found this to be “entirely illogical,” given they were on a straight stretch of road in a convoy. This inconsistency, while not suggesting deliberate dishonesty, cast sufficient doubt on the reliability of her recollection of events. On this basis, the High Court affirmed the Circuit Court’s decision to dismiss the claim.

The Inescapable Conclusion and a Plea for Reform

Having dismissed the appeal, Justice Twomey was legally compelled to award costs against Ms. Putniene. He acknowledged the grim irony of his position, stating that to do otherwise would inflict an injustice on the defendant, who had successfully defended the claim in two courts and should not have to bear his own legal costs. And so, the judge, in his own words, was forced to apply laws that he believed resulted in an injustice. “All this Court can do is highlight how these laws, unless they are reformed, will continue to inflict injustice, even though the system is supposed to administer justice,” he wrote.

He expressed deep scepticism that the problem could be solved by simply reducing legal fees in the High Court, noting that judges have been calling for such a reduction for 60 years to no avail. Instead, he proposed a more fundamental, structural solution: “urgent consideration” should be given to ensuring that, as in the criminal justice system, only serious cases are tried in the civil division of the High Court. This would involve raising the monetary jurisdictions of the District and Circuit Courts and potentially increasing the number of judges in these more affordable venues to handle the caseload.

The judgment in *Putniene v McDonald* is therefore far more than the resolution of a single traffic accident. It is a powerful indictment of a legal framework that, in the pursuit of justice, can impose financially crippling penalties that bear no rational relationship to the matter in dispute. It is a call to arms for the legislature, a plea to reform a system that, in the judge’s view, has lost its way. For Regina Putniene, the outcome is a harsh one. But her case may yet serve a greater purpose, becoming a catalyst for a long-overdue conversation about how to make justice in Ireland not only accessible but also, and crucially, affordable for all its citizens.