Called to the mini-bar

High Court costs hearings can be arid affairs, but ‘Wagatha Christie’ is the courtroom saga that keeps on giving.

This week’s Royal Courts of Justice hearing before Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker offered legal aid solicitors a tantalising glimpse into how the other half lives, with its dispute over charges for a lawyer’s stay at London’s swanky Nobu Hotel, including two bottles of mini-bar water. Lower grades of fee-earner had to make do with the sordid flophouse that is the, er, West End DoubleTree.

Wagatha has also gifted Obiter one of our favourite legal footnotes this year. The skeleton argument for Coleen Rooney refers to the Sun’s front-page exclusive on the hearing, adding: ‘It is, to the author’s knowledge, the first time an assessment of costs has made front page news.’

But, clearly, there is an appetite for costs when it involves large bills and two warring footballer’s wives. Day two of the three-day hearing made a front-page story in Metro. Obiter wonders if there will be as much media interest in the eventual assessment: one assumes so, if only to find out more about that Nobu stay.