THE total cost of the trial is estimated at over £1 million sterling. This includes the cost of pre-trial preparations and solicitors' and barristers' fees for the trial, which lasted five weeks and two days.
Legal sources in London said the brief fee for Lord Williams QC, counsel for Mr Reynolds, would have been between £25,000 and £40,000. Sources close to this trial, however, said his fee for the case was £75,000.
Mr Andrew Caldecott, a recently promoted QC and libel law expert who also represented Mr Reynolds, would have had a brief fee in the region of £25,000.
Lord Williams's refresher fee was £2,000 a day, and Mr Caldecott's would have been about £1,250. Their junior counsel would have had a brief fee of about £5,000 and a £750 daily refresher. This would have brought counsel fees for Mr Reynolds to £100,000 in brief fees and £4,000 a day in refresher fees, a total of £210,000 in counsel fees alone.
Mr Reynolds was represented by the London libel specialists, Oswald, Hickson, Collier. His Irish-born solicitor in London, Ms Pamela Cassidy, was in court throughout, along with an assistant. Mr Reynolds would have been billed for her time.
A partner in this firm would have cost £200 an hour, and Ms Cassidy, although not a partner and a friend of the Reynolds family, about £160 an hour, according to libel experts. Including her assistant and necessary secretarial support, this would have come to about £50,000 for the duration of the trial.
In addition, the preparation of the trial would have been between £150,000 and £200,000.
Costs for the Sunday Times would have been somewhat less, as it employs in-house lawyers and its QC, Mr James Price, is junior to Lord Williams in age and experience.
Nonetheless, he is thought to have been paid a brief fee of around £45,000 and a refresher fee of £2,000 a day. There were two junior counsel with him, who would have cost in the region of £30,000-£40,000 between them - about £140,000 in counsel fees.
The time spent by the solicitors both in preparing the trial and in court (there were two or three Sunday Times solicitors in court every day) would also have to be taken into account.
By the middle of last week sources close to the Sunday Times were estimating costs at £750,000. By yesterday, that figure will have risen by around another £50,000. This £800,000 total is likely to rise further when all the bills come in.
THESE bills will include the Reynolds family's rent for an apartment in London for the six-week trial, various members of the family making numerous trips to London to attend the trial; the cost of Mr Ruddock's wife, Jackie, attending the trial; and the costs suffered by Mr Ruddock in being present in court daily.
In general, the side which loses picks up all the bills. However, the Sunday Times lodged £5,005 with the court at the outset. As Mr Reynolds was awarded less than this sum by the jury - in fact he was awarded nothing - he will have to pay all the court costs (but not the preparation costs) on the grounds that this amount was there for him at the beginning and therefore it was unnecessary to go to court to get it.
However, as he received no damages at all, Mr Reynolds may have to pay preparation costs and this will be the subject of legal argument today.