1The reasonableness of a party's rejection of a settlement offer (whether a PIPA mandatory final offer or a Calderbank offer) is assessed by reference to the circumstances prevailing at the time the offer was made, including the issues then in play; where the ultimately determinative defence had not been pleaded at the time of the offers, rejection was not unreasonable.
2Where a successful defendant raised the sole defence upon which it succeeded only at a late stage of proceedings and failed on every other contested liability issue, the court may exercise its discretion to make no order as to costs for the period before that defence was raised and to order only a proportion of costs thereafter.
3The 'event' in UCPR r 681 is to be approached distributively — referring to the event of each separate issue — and a party's failure on multiple discrete issues may justify departure from the usual costs order notwithstanding ultimate success in the litigation.
