Elevate Brandpartners Ltd v Hammond (No 2)

Elevate Brandpartners Ltd brought an application against Hammond in the Federal Court, seeking relief related to a contractual dispute. The case was a follow-up to a previous proceeding, indicating an ongoing conflict between the parties over specific terms or performance of their agreement. The application was interlocutory in nature, focusing on interim matters rather than the final resolution of the dispute.

The central legal issue before the court was whether to make a costs order in favour of one party or the other, given that each party had achieved partial success in different aspects of the case. The court needed to determine if the overall success of one party justified an order for the other party to bear the costs, or if the partial successes of both parties warranted a more equitable distribution of costs.

The court reasoned that neither party had achieved complete success across all issues. Instead, each party had succeeded to varying degrees in different parts of the case. Given this, the court concluded that it was not appropriate to make a costs order in favour of one party alone. Instead, the fairest outcome was for each party to bear its own costs. This decision reflects the principle that costs should follow the event, but only where there is a clear overall winner.

As a result, the court ordered that each party is to pay its own costs on the interlocutory application filed on 3 June 2019. This decision ensures that neither party is unduly burdened by the costs of the other, aligning with the principle of fairness in the distribution of legal expenses.