Orio Holdings Pty Ltd v Costi & Co (No 1) - [2007] SASC 403

SUPREME COURT OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
(Civil: Application)
ORIO HOLDINGS PTY LTD & ANOR v COSTI & CO (NO 1)
[2007] SASC 403
Reasons of Judge Lunn a Master of the Supreme Court
19 November 2007
PROCEDURE
Costs - clients requesting taxation under s 42 of the Legal Practitioners Act - dispute on whether clients entered into an unsigned written retainer agreement which provided for time costing and which complied with s 42(6) of that Act - onus of proof on solicitor - held no express oral acceptance by clients of written retainer - held costs to be taxed according to applicable Court scales.

ORIO HOLDINGS PTY LTD & ANOR v COSTI & CO (NO 1)
[2007] SASC 403

JUDGE LUNN:
Background:
The plaintiff, Orio Holdings Pty Ltd (“Orio”), is a company controlled by the second plaintiff, Spiros Psevdos (“Mr Psevdos”). Orio and Mr Psevdos carries on the business of a loan arranger. Up until May 2004 that business was carried on under the name of Resi (SA) through an arrangement with Resi Mortgage Corporation Pty Ltd (“Resi NSW”). Mr Psevdos holds a law degree, but has never practised as a lawyer.
The defendant is a firm carrying a legal practice in Adelaide. Its principal is Constantine Costi (“Mr Costi”). Since about 1998 the defendant had employed Mary Dimitriou (“Ms Dimitriou”) as the secretary to Mr Costi and later as the office manager of its practice. Ms Dimitriou is the sister-in-law of Mr Costi.
In 2000 Mr Psevdos met Mr Costi. They became good friends. They frequently visited each other’s offices, which were close by. Mr Psevdos already knew Ms Dimitriou and had an ongoing business relationship with her husband. In late 2002 the defendant commenced acting as a solicitor for the plaintiffs in a variety of matters, most of which were non-litigious. Mr Psevdos also referred various parties in the money-lending transactions in which the plaintiffs were involved to the defendant for legal assistance. In most of the matters in which the defendant acted for the plaintiffs a lump sum fee for the legal work was agreed in advance based on a charge-out rate of $300 per hour plus GST for the work of Mr Costi. In none of those matters did either of the plaintiffs enter into a written retainer agreement with the defendant.
Mr Psevdos knew, and used, a number of other lawyers in Adelaide for a variety of legal work, but he had never entered into a written retainer agreement with any of them. He knew their charge-out rates and how they compared with Mr Costi’s charge-out rate of $300 per hour. Until about February 2006 he was not aware of the Supreme Court Scale for lawyers’ charges or of its significance.
On 8 August 2003 Mr Costi entered into a contract on behalf of himself or his nominee to purchase two properties, 106 and 107 South Terrace, Adelaide (“l06 and 107”). He assigned the contract to purchase 107 to Orio. Orio procured the finance for Mr Costi and his wife to purchase 106. On 11 December 2003 settlement occurred on these purchases with 106 being transferred to Mr and Mrs Costi and 107 to Orio. A cheque from Orio which Mr Costi used to pay fees for Orio to the LTO on the settlement was dishonoured. There were discussions between Mr Psevdos and Mr and Mrs Costi as to how they might in the future redevelop the properties and 106 and 107 South Terrace for their mutual profit but no redevelopment plans were ever finalised.
On 1 April 2004 the plaintiffs received a letter from Resi NSW advising their arrangement with it would be terminated as from 4 May 2004. This had serious potential adverse consequences for the business of the plaintiffs. On that day Mr Psevdos with Michael Kemp, a former solicitor who was employed by him in a non-legal role, met with Mr Costi about the letter. It was agreed that Mr Psevdos and Mr Kemp would prepare written instructions for Mr Costi about the complicated history of the relationship between the plaintiffs and Resi NSW. Mr Psevdos was aware that if the defendant acted for the plaintiffs in any dispute with Resi NSW, then its charges would be based on a charge-out rate for Mr Costi of $300 per hour plus GST.
Although the operative date for the termination of the Resi arrangement was 4 May 2004, there was no further significant communication between these parties on the matter until 22 April 2004. On that day Mr Psevdos and Mr Kemp presented Mr Costi with some documents they had prepared, but Mr Costi regarded them as seriously inadequate as instructions for any urgent injunction application to stop Resi NSW terminating the arrangement. On that day Mr Costi printed out a draft of a written retainer agreement for the defendant to act for the plaintiffs in any proposed Supreme Court litigation (“the retainer agreement”). Mr Psevdos disputes this agreement was ever given to him and I will deal with that later. The document dealt in detail with the terms of the defendant acting for the plaintiffs, and in particular stipulated that the fees would be time-costed in lieu of being based on the Supreme Court Schedule. It provided a rate of $300 per hour for Mr Costi plus GST and lesser rates for other solicitors assisting him, but generally not any charges for the work of non-legal staff. As I will find below there was a further meeting between Mr Costi and Ms Psevdos during the day of 23 April and at that meeting Mr Costi gave to Mr Psevdos a revised version of the retainer agreement which contained at its end a place for Mr Psevdos to sign on behalf of himself and Orio to confirm that they had agreed to its terms. The plaintiffs never signed that agreement or returned it to the defendant.
On the evening of 23 April 2004 Mr Psevdos urgently consulted Mr Costi about a contract which he had just discovered his mother had signed in which she had agreed to sell a property she owned for what he believed was grossly undervalue. Mr Costi urgently consulted a barrister, Mr Robert Sallis (“Mr Sallis”), whom he then regularly retained, about the matter. Mr Psevdos and Mr Costi saw Mr Sallis at his home that night for some hours about possible challenges to the contract. Neither Mr Costi nor Mr Sallis ever made any charge to Mr Psevdos or his mother for this work. At about this time Mr Psevdos instructed Mr Costi to retain Mr Sallis as counsel for the plaintiffs in the proposed urgent application for an injunction against Resi NSW. As from about 24 April Mr Costi began to do a substantial amount of work to launch an action in this Court by the plaintiffs against Resi NSW
On 4 May 2004 the defendant on behalf of the plaintiffs instituted action no 469 of 2004 in this Court against Resi NSW. The plaintiffs contested application for an urgent interlocutory injunction to stop Resi NSW terminating its arrangement with the plaintiffs was argued before the Chief Justice on 13 May 2004. On 21 May he delivered his written reasons and dismissed the application. Mr Psevdos immediately instructed the defendant to terminate the retainer of Mr Sallis, to brief other counsel and to proceed with the urgent prosecution of the action in an attempt to obtain an early trial for it.
On 30 June 2004 Orio entered into a contract for it or its nominee to purchase 108 South Terrace, Adelaide (“108”). This was pursuant to some undocumented arrangement between the plaintiffs and Mr and Mrs Costi that Orio on the one hand and Mr and Mrs Costi on the other hand would each have a half-interest in that property. When settlement occurred on 6 August 2004, 108 was transferred into the joint names of the plaintiff and Mr and Mrs Costi. The arrangements for their financing of this joint purchase are the subject of considerable dispute and will be mentioned later.
In October 2004 Mr Psevdos, without the involvement of any lawyers, settled action 469/04 with Resi NSW which resulted in $300,000 being paid into the trust account of the defendant in November 2004. The plaintiffs refused to authorise the defendant to pay out of the moneys in trust more than $10,000 towards the approximate $35,200 of counsel fees (including GST) charged by Mr Sallis. The balance of those counsel fees have not yet been paid and have been the subject of a complaint to the Legal Practitioners Conduct Board by Mr Sallis against Mr Costi. (I make no comment at this stage about these counsel fees as they are likely to be the subject of dispute on the adjudication of costs). Also in 2006 the plaintiffs made a complaint to that Board concerning Mr Costi. I do not know the terms of the complaint, but it apparently relates to the defendant having applied costs which it alleges the plaintiffs owed it toward the contribution of Mr and Mrs Costi to the purchase of 108. The Conduct Board has adjourned its inquiry until after the completion of this taxation.
The issues.
On 5 May 2006 the plaintiffs filed a request under s 42 of the Legal Practitioners Act 1981(“s 42”) to tax the costs charged to them by the defendant for the work in 469/04. It was agreed that prior to any bill of costs being prepared and lodged by the defendant I should rule on the following questions:
1Was an agreement in writing pursuant to s 42(6) Legal Practitioners Act 1981 entered into between the plaintiffs and the defendant in respect of work done by the defendant in relation to action 469 of 2004 in this Honourable Court?
2If so:
2.1What were the terms of the agreement?
2.2Should the agreement be set aside or varied as being unfair or unreasonable at common law or within the meaning of s 42(7) Legal Practitioners Act 1981?
3Were tax invoices rendered by the defendant for work done in relation to the said action and, if so, what invoices were rendered and when?
Voluminous affidavits and exhibits have been filed on these issues. I directed that there should be cross-examination of Mr Psevdos, Mr Costi and Ms Dimitriou on their respective affidavits. At the hearing counsel agreed that I need not rule on the 3^rd issue quoted above, and need only address it insofar as it was necessary to rule on issues 1 and 2.
The disputes between the parties are much more wide-ranging than issues 1 and 2. From the outset I made it clear that I was only dealing with issues 1 and 2 and would only go into related issues insofar as it was necessary for me to determine issues 1 and 2. Other factual issues may arise later in the taxation and they will be addressed if and when they arise. The dispute about the respective financial contributions of the parties to the acquisition of 108 also apparently involves Mrs Costi, who is not a party to these proceedings. Hence, the final resolution of that dispute must be left for other proceedings.
Onus of proof.
The primary issue on which I have to rule is whether the retainer agreement constitutes the terms of the contract between the parties for the performance and charging of legal services rendered by the defendant to the plaintiffs. As the matter evolved in the course of evidence and argument that became the question of whether the plaintiffs had agreed to the written retainer being the terms of the contract between the parties. This turns on the ordinary principles of contract law and not on the special requirements of s 42. There was no dispute that if the terms of the retainer agreement were not agreed to by the plaintiffs there was still a retainer agreement between the parties with an implied term that the defendant was entitled to be paid for its work in accordance with the applicable Supreme Court Scales of Costs. The defendant’s counsel conceded that there was an onus on the balance of probabilities for it to show that the retainer agreement constituted the terms of the contract between the parties.
In Griffiths v Evans [1953] 2 All ER 1364 at 1369 Denning LJ (as he then was) said:
On this question of retainer, I would observe that where there is a difference between a solicitor and his client on it, the Courts have said for the last hundred years or more that the word of the client is to be preferred to the word of the solicitor, or, at any rate, more weight is to be given to it (citation of authority). The reason is plain. It is because the client is ignorant and the solicitor is, or should be, learned. If the solicitor does not take the precaution of getting a written retainer, he has only himself to thank for being at variance with his client over it and must take the consequences.
In Murphy v Liesfild [1930] VLR 142 the Full Court of Victoria held there was no rule of law that the word of the client must be taken in preference to that of the solicitor on whether there was a retainer or not, but in a jury trial where there was conflicting oral evidence between the client and a solicitor as to whether there was a retainer the jury could take into account, in effect, that the solicitor should have known how to properly protect himself in the event of a dispute about what was said and done. There is no need to go into the older authorities relied upon by Denning LJ as in this matter I need do no more than take into account in assessing the weight to be given to the defendant’s evidence its failures to insure that the retainer agreement was signed by the plaintiffs and that no contemporaneous notes were made of relevant matters.
Credibility of the witnesses.
The dominant consideration is that this is a case of former good friends who have fallen out, and fallen out badly. Throughout the affidavits and the oral evidence, there was a strong undercurrent of antagonism and hostility between the parties. Mr Costi and Ms Dimitriou on the one hand and Mr Psevdos on the other hand believe they have been betrayed by a former trusted friend. Each of them went to great lengths to justify their own positions and to paint themselves as the party who was wholly in the right. None of them were objective and independent witnesses whose recollections of various events had not been coloured and clouded by substantial self-interest. I strongly doubt that any witness told the whole truth about what had occurred.
As between Mr Costi and Mr Psevdos, Mr Costi was the less unimpressive witness. His contemporaneous notes of the meetings in April 2004 do not contain entries which would be usually be expected from a solicitor about what he said and did concerning the retainer agreement. However, as my findings below do not turn on the credit to be given to his evidence, I need not comment on it further. I reject the plaintiffs’ submission that a “Jones v Dunkel” inference should be drawn against the defendant from its failure to call Mr Chrzaszcz, another solicitor, to support Mr Costi’s evidence of what meetings occurred on 23 April. Mr Chrzaszcz was also a client of Mr Psevdos and was not so much in the camp of the defendant that any such inference could be drawn against the defendant.
I did not find the evidence of Ms Dimitriou to be impressive or convincing. She was obviously seeking to support her employer and a relative in a dispute with a former friend.
Mr Psevdos was an unimpressive and unconvincing witness. His contentious assertions were not generally supported by any other evidence. While I can accept there was some discussion about a fixed fee agreement in April 2004 for 469/04 I reject his assertions that there had been such agreements orally reached for the interlocutory injunction proceedings and for the subsequent preparation of the statement of claim and that he continued in his subsequent dealings with the defendant to believe that the part payments which were made to the defendant were in accordance with such agreements. I reject his evidence that in mid 2004 he blamed Mr Costi as well as Ms Sallis for the failure of the interlocutory injunction application. All the other evidence is to the effect that he blamed Mr Sallis alone for it. His conduct immediately after the decision of the Chief Justice in continuing to retain the defendant as his solicitor, and in June 2004 jointly to purchase 108 with Mr and Mrs Costi in an undocumented “mates” type arrangement, was conduct quite inconsistent with his evidence on the point in cross-examination.
The retainer agreement.
I find that on about 23 April 2004 Mr Costi gave the unsigned retainer agreement in its final form to Mr Psevdos, and I reject his evidence to the contrary. The evidence of the draft, and then the document in its final form, makes it likely that the agreement was generated on about 22/23 April and it is highly plausible that Mr Costi would have then given it to Mr Psevdos. I do not need to make any findings on the contested evidence of whether Mr Psevdos then orally agreed to its terms because Mr Costi’s evidence was that he was prepared to give Mr Psevdos some time to consider it before he finally had to accept it or reject it. The retainer agreement on its face required a signature of Mr Psevdos to complete it and Mr Costi was not asking him at that time to sign it. Mr Costi’s position was summed up in this passage from his cross-examination:
Q     But at the end of the meeting on 23 April you had no concluded agreement, did you?
A:    No, we had an agreement. What we didn’t have was him signing the record of that agreement because I’d left that with him in case he wanted to have second thoughts or digest it or more change his mind.
Q     If you had an agreement how could he change his mind. An agreement is an agreement.
A:    If a client makes a retainer agreement with you and then they change their mind, they decide not to instruct you or they change their mind and say I don’t agree with what you want to charge me or how you want to charge me, that’s not the sort of thing I would hold a client to at such an early stage of the file.
…..
Whether there was an agreement or not is a conclusion of law. In saying there was a concluded agreement, Mr Costi was drawing an incorrect conclusion of law. According to Ms Dimitriou the general practice of the defendant was not to require clients to sign such agreements as soon as they were presented to them, but to allow them some time to consider them and possibly take advice on them. The preponderance of evidence is that whatever Mr Psevdos may have said in response to receiving the document (on which I make no findings) he was to have a reasonable opportunity to consider the document further before he needed to decide whether to sign it or not.
Express acceptance of the retainer agreement.
The defendant submitted that there had been an express oral acceptance of the retainer agreement in a conversation between Mr Psevdos and Ms Dimitriou. The submission was based on the following paragraphs of her first affidavit:
13.4I asked Con Costi whether he had the letter of retainer, and he advised me he had left it with Spiros Psevdos to read and that Spiros Psevdos would be getting back to him; and
13.5When Spiros Psevdos subsequently attended at our office within a few working days after 23 April 2004 he was holding a document which he inadvertently left on my Reception Desk (as he occasional did with documents, as explained in more detail in paragraph ….. below), which I saw was the original of the said printed letter. I accordingly asked him whether he was happy with it and that, if so, could he sign it so that I could then make a copy of it as signed by him (as it is my habit to keep the original as signed by a client and to give the client a photocopy of it with their signature on it). He said that he was happy with it and that he would sign it but that he was in a hurry to get somewhere else and would do so later, at which time he left the office in a hurry.

The crucial evidence is that Mr Psevdos said “that he was happy with it”. If those, or very similar, words were not said, the rest of that passage would not amount to evidence of either an express or an implied acceptance by the plaintiffs of the retainer agreement. On the balance of probabilities I do not accept the evidence of Ms Dimitriou that Mr Psevdos said “that he was happy with it” or anything to that effect. She made no contemporaneous note about it, or about the meeting at all. In cross-examination she said could not remember whether she had told Mr Costi at any time after 23 April that Mr Psevdos had said that he was happy with the retainer agreement. It is unlikely that she did so tell Mr Costi as there is no mention of it in his detailed first affidavit sworn on 4 August 2006. The first mention of it in any document is in the affidavit of Ms Dimitriou sworn on 19 March 2007. It was part of Ms Dimitriou’s duties as the office manager of the defendant to follow up with clients their execution of such retainer agreements and to insure that the signed original was placed on to the client’s file and a copy given to the client. Ms Dimitriou says that here she forgot to follow the matter up. Hence at least in part she is responsible for the defendant’s present problem in proving that the retainer agreement was the agreement between the parties. Her evidence generally was partisan towards the defendant. While I do not find that she was lying, it is likely that in the intervening years she has convinced herself that Mr Psevdos did say that he was happy with the document. If he had said it, the consequences of her failing to follow up the execution of the retainer agreement by Mr Psevdos would be much less serious for her employer. I find there was no express oral acceptance of the retainer agreement by the plaintiffs.
Acceptance by conduct.
The plaintiffs’ counsel did not dispute that an offer constituted by the written retainer agreement could in law be accepted by the plaintiffs by their conduct, but he submitted that on the evidence there had been no such conduct. The defendant’s counsel submitted that there had been such an acceptance by the plaintiffs’ conduct, but he did not descend to any particularity. The defendant’s affidavits contained extensive evidence about the dealings between the parties after April 2004 as confirmation and ratification of the retainer agreement, and presumably as acceptance of it by conduct. Much of this evidence was disputed by the plaintiffs.
No authorities were cited on the law of acceptance by conduct. All the cases which I have researched of a written but unexecuted document having been found to be the contract between the parties because of their subsequent conduct have been cases where the issue was either the written document constituted the terms of the contract or there was no contract between the parties. That is not the case here. It is undisputed that the defendant acted under some retainer from the plaintiffs which, if it was not constituted by the terms of the retainer agreement, was partly oral and partly implied, including the incorporation of the Supreme Court Scales of Costs.
In the leading authority of Brogden v Metropolitan Railway Company (1887) 2 AC 666, at 686 Lord Hatherley enunciated the criterion for the acceptance of an offer by conduct in terms which are appropriate for a contest between two versions of a contract where he said:
It does establish a course of action on the part of the Plaintiffs of such a character as necessarily to lead to the inference on the part of the Defendants that the agreement had been accepted on the part of the Plaintiffs, and was to be acted upon by them; and they did act upon it accordingly.
This is consistent with what was said there by Lord Blackburn at pp 696-697. See also Gjergja v Cooper [1987] VR 167 at 203-4 per Ormiston J. Hence for there to be acceptance by conduct here of the retainer agreement I need to find some conduct of the plaintiffs which is unequivocally referrable to them having accepted the terms of the written retainer agreement as distinct from what would be consistent with the alternative oral/implied retainer.
Any finding that the plaintiffs accepted, and acquiesced in, the charging out of Mr Costi’s time at the rate of $300 per hour plus GST is not in itself a sufficiently unequivocal act consistent with the acceptance of the retainer agreement as a whole to constitute acceptance of it by conduct by the plaintiffs. At all relevant times Mr Psevdos was aware that Mr Costi’s current personal charge-out rate for legal work was $300 per hour. He never suggested that it was a rate he was not prepared to pay. Rather the issue was the amount of work which was to be the subject of it. In his previous dealings with the defendant in matters where a lump fee had been set in advance that fee had been calculated by an agreed number of hours estimated for the job multiplied by $300 plus GST. On the evidence I would be prepared to find that Mr Psevdos had orally agreed to pay Mr Costi for 446/04 at $300 per hour plus GST but under s 42(6) such an agreement is void because it was not in writing. (However, there was no oral agreement on other aspects of how the defendant’s work would be charged out on a time basis).
The retainer agreement contained a number of other significant terms in addition to Mr Costi’s charge-out rate of $300 per hour. Of particular significance was that it entitled the defendant to charge on a purely time basis in units of 6 minutes for all work performed by it. What is for the benefit of the solicitor, and to the detriment of the client, in such agreements is that the scope of the work which can be charged is substantially increased over that which could be charged under the Supreme Court Scale, eg it enables the solicitor to charge for researching law which is usually not allowable under the Supreme Court Scales. The retainer agreement also provided for a rate of $200 per hour plus GST for an associate assisting Mr Costi. (As at 23 April 2004 this substantially exceeded the scale rate of $165 per hour, although the scale rate was increased as from 29 July 2004 to $250 per hour). Any acceptance of the retainer agreement by conduct has to be by conduct which shows an acceptance by the plaintiffs of terms of the retainer agreement such as these mentioned, although not necessarily all of them. There is no such evidence. At the best for the defendant the evidence is merely that the plaintiff accepted a charge out rate of $300 per hour plus GST, but that is not sufficiently unequivocal. Hence the defendant has not established an acceptance of the retainer agreement by the plaintiffs’ conduct.
Even if conduct by the plaintiffs in accepting, acquiescing in and paying for the defendant’s legal work, or some of it, at the rate of $300 per hour plus GST was sufficiently unequivocal conduct to be an acceptance of a written retainer, I find that there is no such evidence. The defendant’s counsel did not particularise the specific conduct relied upon, but referred to the plaintiffs’ conduct at large. I now deal with what I consider to be the only two items of the plaintiffs’ conduct which could possibly qualify as an acceptance of the rate of $300 per hour plus GST.
The defendant claimed that on 25 May 2004 and 29 June 2004 it generated tax invoices/accounts directed to the plaintiffs for its work 449/04 up to those dates. It claimed that these documents were given to Mr Psevdos on or shortly after those dates, but he denied that. Even if those documents were given to the plaintiffs, they do not tell the plaintiffs that they were being charged at $300 per hour plus GST. The documents do not refer to the retainer agreement and do not mention an hourly rate of $300 per hour or any other general hourly rate. They give brief particulars of the work done. In some instances, but not all, they do not state the length of time occupied in a particular item of work. It is impossible from what appears in those documents to deduce that Mr Costi’s time was being charged at $300 per hour or otherwise to ascertain how the total charges made were arrived at. Therefore, any acquiescence in these documents by the plaintiffs, or any payments based on them, are not necessarilyreferrable to a rate of $300 per hour plus GST or to the terms of the retainer agreement.
Mr Costi claimed that by an undocumented oral agreement with the plaintiffs the defendant’s unbilled work in progress of $40,359 (“the WIP”) for uncharged work of the defendant for the plaintiffs in 469/04 up until 22 July 2004 was applied as part of the contribution from him and his wife to the purchase of 108. This was strenuously disputed by Mr Psevdos. I do not intend to go further into this dispute as it potentially involves Mrs Costi. Even if the $40,359 WIP was calculated on the basis of a charge-out rate of $300 per hour plus GST, and in accordance with terms of the retainer agreement, and even if Mr Psevdos had agreed to that sum of WIP being applied by Mr and Mrs Costi in the purchase of 108, there is no evidence the plaintiffs knew that this sum of $40,359 was calculated at the rate of $300 per hour plus GST, or otherwise under the terms of the retainer agreement. Hence, even if Mr Psevdos had agreed to this WIP being applied in the purchase of 108, it does not necessarily amount to an acceptance by conduct of a rate of $300 per hour plus GST or of the terms of the retainer agreement.
Accordingly, I find that the defendant has not established that the plaintiffs ever legally bound themselves to the retainer agreement. The likelihood is that Mr Psevdos refrained from committing the plaintiffs to its terms in the belief and expectation that as friends he and Mr Costi would later negotiate an amicable agreement for whatever was to be payable by the plaintiffs to the defendant. In the hurly-burly of interlocutory injunction application in early May 2004 other issues in the litigation took priority. The issue was not whether the defendant would be paid for its work, but whether it would be paid significantly above what the Court regards as reasonable remuneration for such legal work.
I rule on the issues quoted above as follows:
1There was no agreement in writing pursuant to s 42 allowing the defendant to recover legal costs in excess of those payable under the relevant Court Scales.
2Unnecessary to answer.
I will direct that the defendant file a long form bill of costs for taxation on the basis of the relevant Court Scales. I will hold a further directions hearing to consider how long should be allowed for this on 5 December 2007 at 9.30 am.
I do not believe that I have yet made any appealable order. If the defendant wishes to challenge my ruling before the completion of the taxation, some other procedural steps will need to be taken to enable this to be done.