The Attorney-General has been ordered to pay costs in a Public Access to Information request case.

The Pati request in 2018 by The Royal Gazette concerned documents for a $600,000 settlement from the Ministry of Health to the Brown-Darrell Clinic and Bermuda Healthcare Services, operated by former premier Ewart Brown.

The payment to Dr Brown was in compensation for financial losses incurred after fees were cut for medical scans.

The ministry had refused to release some of the documents, citing confidentiality because they had been “obtained or created” by the Attorney-General’s Chambers, which put them outside the scope of the Pati Act.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, the Information Commissioner, was asked by the Gazette to review the decision.

When her request to the ministry to review the records was turned down, Ms Gutierrez issued summonses to the ministry and the Solicitor-General, leading Kathy Lynn Simmons, the Attorney-General, to seek a judicial review in 2021 in the Supreme Court.

Puisne Judge Shade Subair Williams agreed with the Attorney-General that the summonses should be quashed.

The ruling was challenged in the Court of Appeal, which ruled in March that the Information Commissioner was within her right to review the documents.

The commissioner applied to the court for legal costs, while the Attorney-General’s Chambers asked the court not to make a costs order.

The ruling by Justice of Appeal Geoffrey Bell noted that “any order for the payment of costs on this appeal will essentially amount to an order for the reallocation of budgeted funds within the Consolidated Fund” which provided the finances of both parties.

Mr Justice Bell ruled this month that while both were public authorities, the Attorney-General’s Chambers had been prepared to seek an order for costs against the commissioner in the lower courts.

He noted: “The funding of the office impacts the commissioner’s ability to meet her mandate set out in the Pati Act.”

Costs were thus awarded to the Information Commissioner.