Wright v Keon-Cohen & Anor; Currie v Neesham & Anor; Danci v Duggan

These applications for special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia concerned the jurisdiction of the County Court of Victoria to award costs in criminal proceedings. The applicants, Mr Wright, Mr Currie, and Mr Danci, sought to challenge decisions of the County Court and the Director of Public Prosecutions for the State of Victoria. The core of the dispute revolved around whether the County Court possessed the power to award costs in its criminal jurisdiction, either through statutory provisions or its inherent jurisdiction.

The central legal issue before the High Court was the interpretation of section 78A of the *County Court Act 1958* (Vic) and its application to the award of costs in criminal matters. Ancillary to this was the question of whether the County Court possessed an inherent jurisdiction to award costs, independent of statutory authority, and the parameters of such jurisdiction. The applicants contended that the County Court's power to award costs derived from section 78A and its inherent jurisdiction, while the respondents, and indeed the Full Court in prior judgments, argued that such power was restricted to civil proceedings.

The applicants' argument was that section 78A provided the necessary statutory power for the County Court to award costs in criminal proceedings. They further submitted that even if section 78A were to be interpreted as applying only to civil matters, the County Court retained an inherent jurisdiction to award costs in any matter before it, once the statutory power to award costs had been established. However, the Court, through Mason CJ and McHugh J, expressed skepticism regarding the existence of an inherent jurisdiction to award costs, emphasizing that costs are generally a creation of statute and not a matter of inherent judicial power at common law.