Lloyds/HBOS litigation: judgment on costs and permission to appeal

The High Court has handed down judgment on costs issues and an application for permission to appeal, following on from the court's rejection last year of the claims brought against Lloyds in a shareholder class action relating to its acquisition of HBOS in 2008: Sharp & Ors v Blank & Ors [2020] EWHC 1870 (Ch). (A briefing paper on the liability decision from our Banking Litigation team, who acted for Lloyds, is available here.)

In its recent judgment, the court refused permission to appeal the liability decision and made a number of interesting findings on the adverse costs position of the claimants, and the litigation funders who backed the claim, following their failure. In particular:

• It rejected an argument that the claimants should only be required to pay 60% of the defendants’ costs on the basis that they “succeeded” on two issues. The judge commented that “there is no reason in principle why a party who succeeds in establishing one element of his cause of action but fails to establish the others should be regarded as partially successful”.
• It held that Therium, the claimants’ litigation funder, should be jointly and severally liable for the defendants' costs, rejecting Therium's argument that it should be liable only to the extent that the claimants did not satisfy the adverse costs order.

For more information see this post on our Banking Litigation Notes blog.