Language – a fortiori

The Oxford English Dictionary says:

a fortiori, adv. & adj.

Used to express a hypothesis or conclusion for which there is stronger evidence than for one previously accepted: with stronger reason, even more…

The Oxford English Dictionary also says:

The earliest known use of the word a fortiori is in the mid 1500s.

OED’s earliest evidence for a fortiori is from 1569, in the writing of Nicholas Haward, author.

a fortiori is a borrowing from Latin.

Etymons: Latin a fortiori.

Black’s Law Dictionary says (10^th ed, page 72):             

adv. [Latin] (16c) By even greater force of logic; even more so it follows <if a 14-year-old child cannot sign a binding contract, then, a fortiori, a 13-year-old cannot>. Cf. A multo fortiori.

The word is often used in Court decisions. For example, by the High Court in

Tanwar Enterprises Pty Ltd v Cauchi (2003) 217 CLR 315 at 348 – 349, per Kirby J:

[100]     Meantime, in England, in Shiloh Spinners Ltd v Harding[185], Lord Wilberforce had set out two heads of the jurisdiction to relieve against forfeiture of property. His speech appeared to reflect something of a return to the large view of intervention that equity had asserted before the Privy Council decisions in Steedman and Brickles. Thus, Lord Wilberforce acknowledged the existence of the jurisdiction to relieve against forfeiture:

“First, where it is possible to state that the object of the transaction and of the insertion of the right to forfeit is essentially to secure the payment of money, equity has been willing to relieve on terms that the payment is made with interest, if appropriate, and also costs … Secondly, there were the heads of fraud, accident, mistake or surprise, always a ground for equity’s intervention, the inclusion of which entailed the exclusion of mere inadvertence and a fortiori of wilful defaults.”

(185) [1973] AC 691 at 722.

and in the Court of Appeal in:

Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd & Ors v Wagner & Ors [2021] QCA 84 (30 April 2021) at [11], per Jackson J, with whom Morrison and Mullins JJA agreed:

The Court of Appeal’s powers include that it may make the order as to the whole or part of the costs of an appeal it considers appropriate.^[5] Broadly speaking, the principles which inform the exercise of the discretionary power to award costs on appeal are similar to those that apply to the exercise of the discretionary power to award costs of a proceeding at first instance. Having regard to the text of the express rule providing for the power of the Court of Appeal to order costs, it may not be strictly necessary to have regard to the power of the Court at first instance to order costs, including the express provision that costs “follow the event, unless the court orders otherwise”.^[6] But the usual exercise of the discretion to order the general costs of an appeal is that they follow the event because under the statutory power to “award costs”:^[7]

“[I]t is just for a successful litigant, and perhaps a fortiori a successful appellant, to be able to recover [their] costs from someone.”^[8]

^[5] Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld), r 766(1)(d).

^[6] Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld), r 681(1).

^[7] Civil Proceedings Act 2011 (Qld), s 15.

^[8] Holden & Co v Crown Prosecution Service (No 2) [1994] 1 AC 22, 39-40; Jaycar Pty Ltd v Lombardo [2011] NSWCA 284, [61]-[62].