The City of Stirling claims it has incurred legal fees exceeding $53,000 after taking legal action against a Scarborough ratepayer over an unpaid rates bill of just $1,899. The council initiated proceedings in the Magistrates Court last year, and a magistrate initially ordered the ratepayer to pay $53,344 in legal costs. However, a District Court judge has since found that decision was made in error and has ordered a retrial.
Background of the Dispute
Legal proceedings were first brought against the ratepayer for failing to pay their 2023-24 council rates. The ratepayer disputed the debt, arguing that previous payments from 2022 and 2023 should have been applied to the outstanding amount. After several months of attempts to recover the debt, the city sued the ratepayer in May 2024.
The rates bill was eventually paid in April 2025, but the dispute over legal costs remained unresolved. The matter proceeded to trial in June 2025, where a magistrate awarded the city $53,344 in legal costs. The magistrate found that the ratepayer had no legal basis for their defence and that the costs incurred were both reasonable in amount and for work reasonably undertaken.
District Court Ruling
However, the ratepayer challenged the decision, and the case is now set for a retrial. In a ruling delivered last month, District Court Judge Matthew Curwood found that the magistrate had made an error. Judge Curwood stated that there was an “insufficient evidentiary foundation” to assess the city’s costs without details of the work actually undertaken being provided.
“There was no real dispute about the underlying debt, and in the absence of supporting evidence or analysis of how time was expended, whether by reference to hourly rates or some other methodology, it is difficult to be satisfied that the amount claimed was reasonable in amount,” Judge Curwood said. He added that the absence of such analysis gave rise to a legal error in the assessment for the purposes of statutory recovery powers.
Judge Curwood also noted that no enquiry was made into which practitioners performed the work charged, the precise tasks undertaken and the time spent on them, whether there was duplication between different practitioners, and the extent to which the claimed costs related to matters outside the scope of the recovery proceedings.
City of Stirling Response
While unable to comment on the specific details of the case as proceedings are ongoing, a City of Stirling spokesperson told PerthNow that the city seeks to ensure unpaid rates and legal costs are recovered so they are “not borne by other ratepayers.”
“It is important for the city to pursue unpaid rates and the recovery of legal costs to ensure equity for all ratepayers,” the spokesperson said. “The city follows a prescribed process involving reminders and final demands before initiating a claim for unpaid rates with the Magistrates’ Court. This is not a step which is taken lightly.”
Ratepayer's Concerns
In a statement given to PerthNow, the ratepayer at the centre of the dispute said that as the court outcome focused on legal costs, it left them with unanswered questions about how the matter had been handled.
“External oversight bodies commonly decline to investigate conduct while a matter is before the Court,” they said. “That leaves no real accountability for how a citizen came to be exposed to such disproportionate legal costs in the first place.”
They expressed concern that, in their view, administrative conduct was left unexamined by the current process. “The Magistrates’ Court did not address the conduct that led to the dispute as part of the costs issue before it. The District Court corrected the narrow legal error and sent the matter back. At each stage, the conduct itself remained unexamined,” they said. “But if the court then resolves the case on a narrow basis and makes no findings on the earlier conduct, the practical result is that serious administrative conduct may never be scrutinised at all.”
