Source: http://piblawg.co.uk/category/case-report/?page=2
Timestamp: 2018-09-26 01:47:40
Document Index: 92231491

Matched Legal Cases: ['EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'art 36', 'art 36']

Judgment in the case of Da Costa v Sargaco [2016] EWCA Civ 764 was handed down last week and represents the latest round of the struggle between claimants bringing claims for injury or damage arising out of road traffic accidents and defendant insurers alleging that claims are fraudulent. The case deals with the cogency of evidence required to establish an allegation of fraud, with the inferences which can be drawn from evidence and with the exclusion of a claimant from court whilst the other is giving evidence. The facts of the case conform to a familiar pattern: a claim for losses arising out of damage to mopeds brought by members of a certain community in London. The claimants’ case was that their parked mopeds were struck by a vehicle, the driver of which had apparently disappeared or at least had not participated in proceedings*. One of the claimants had had three other accidents despite having only arrived in the country in 2010. One of the claimant’s mopeds was involved in another accident etc… The judge ordered each claimant be excluded from court whilst the other gave evidence. She subsequently found that the claimants had not proved their case, she went further and made a finding of fraud and she found they had failed to establish their claim for damages. The judge’s decision was challenged on the ground that the case of Hussain v Hussain and Aviva [2012] EWCA Civ 1367 established “the parameters of appropriate inferences that can be drawn in a case where fraud is alleged, but there is no direct evidence connecting parties alleged to be in a fraudulent conspiracy.” Black L.J. found that “what inferences are appropriate depends entirely on the particular facts of the particular case” and dismissed this ground of appeal. The Court of Appeal was not willing to interfere with the judge’s finding that the claimant’s cases were not proven illustrating the mountain appellants have to climb to overturn a judgment on this basis. Black L.J. spelt out that a finding of fraud does not inevitably follow from a rejection of an accident claim as not proved. She went on to find that the judge did not make sufficient findings or provide sufficient reasoning to substantiate the fraud finding she made against the claimants – that finding was set aside. The judge’s decision was also challenged on the basis that one of the claimants had been excluded whilst the other gave evidence. The Court of Appeal held that there was not an absolute requirement that claimants had the opportunity to be present personally throughout the entirety of the hearing. It gave the example of a litigant who disrupts the hearing by unruly behaviour and may have to be excluded to allow progress to be made. The starting point is that claimants are entitled to be present throughout trial. Black L.J. said that she found it extremely difficult to contemplate there being any sufficient reason for taking excluding one claimant from hearing the evidence of the other in a case such as that of Da Costa. However she did not find that the claimant’s exclusion was automatically fatal to the whole trial. Both claimants were represented by the same counsel, no application was made at the end of cross examination to take instructions from the absent claimant and counsel for the claimant was unable to point to any part of the transcript where things would or might have been different had the claimant been in court during the second claimant’s evidence. The court therefore found that the trial had not been rendered unfair and therefore this ground of appeal failed. The normal incentive to seek a finding of fraud is that it leads into a finding of fundamental dishonesty and the disapplication of qualified one-way costs shifting. This case did not include a claim for personal injury and therefore QOCS did not apply. The defendant did not therefore need a finding of fraud to win or fundamental dishonesty to get its costs. Defendants may therefore want to discourage a judge from going further than he or she needs to in order to dismiss a case. Claimants will want to impress on a judge the requirement for “sufficient findings” and “sufficient reasoning to substantiate” any fraud finding. The cogency of the evidence required makes it difficult for defendants who harbour plenty of understandable suspicions but lack the hard evidence to get a finding of fraud or fundamental dishonesty. As to the finding about excluding claimants from hearing evidence of other claimants, the position is now clear in cases of this sort. What is not so clear is what stance a court can take about the exclusion of witnesses who are not claimants – that is a point which still needs to be argued. *Black L.J. says that the driver was "untraced" but he was named as the First Defendant and one of the allegations was that he used the same address as the claimants. I assume therefore she was not using the word in its technical sense and meant that noone knew of his whereabouts. I am grateful to Steven Templeton for pointing out that it was not the case that Mr Sargaco was "untraced".
In February 2013 nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah from Hither Green in South London died after suffering a severe asthma attack. “Can the courts be used to establish that we have a human right to clean air?” asked Nick Robinson on the Today Programme this morning. A report by Royal College of Physicians has apparently linked 40,000 deaths to pollution each year. A successful case against the government would arguably put the government under considerable pressure as well as resulting in justice for affected families. Ella’s mother and her lawyer were interviewed on the programme. Ella had very severe asthma. According to the Today Programme, nitrogen dioxide levels around their home on the South Circular are double the EU legal limit. Her lawyer, Jocelyn Cockburn, a partner at Hodge Jones & Allen, commented that the coroner had not looked into pollution as a cause of death. The immediate objective, she said, was to try and get a wider investigation into pollution and whether it contributed to Ella’s death. She is seeking to do this by bringing a claim against Lewisham Council and the Mayor of London. She said that they were considering whether or not a case could be brought against the UK government under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Right to Life) on the basis that the government knew that Ella was at immediate risk. There is clearly a long way to go in terms of establishing causation and a claim, but this will be one to keep a close eye on. The full interview can be heard on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07dkk07#play
The Claimant in KCR v The Scout Association [2016] EWHC 597 (QB) suffered sustained abuse by a Cub Scout Group Leader when a young boy in the 1980s. In 2003 the abuser was convicted of a large number of sexual offences against boys including the Claimant. As might be expected, given recent trends in this area of law, the Defendant admitted that it was vicariously liable for the abuser’s actions. The court was therefore concerned solely with the assessment of damages. The case had one feature that is depressingly common and one that is rather unusual. It is also, in more general terms, a helpful illustration of how courts may approach the difficult issues that cases of this kind throw up. It is often the case that victims of abuse are peculiarly vulnerable individuals. Sometimes this gives the abuser the opportunity to perpetrate abuse (for example, if a child is in care) or prevents the abuse being detected (because there is no-one the child can trust enough to confide in). The correlation (or at least frequent concurrence) of pre-existing vulnerability and abuse makes determining issues of causation in such cases difficult, because children who have experienced traumatic childhoods may already be destined to lead difficult adult lives in any event. In this case, the Claimant’s parents separated when he was four or five years old after his father had been violent towards his mother. He began using drugs in his teens and subsequently obtained his income principally from drug-dealing, with the exception of a few short-lived periods when he was in employment. He had a number of convictions for offences relating to drugs, firearms, dishonesty and violence. The Claimant contended that he was entitled to a Blamire award for loss of earnings, past and future, on the basis that his inability to find sustained employment was a result of the abuse he had suffered. The Defendant accepted that the Claimant was entitled to general damages, but disputed the loss of earnings claim, contending that it was his “lifestyle choices” rather than the abuse that had prevented him being in sustained employment. The Defendant further contended that, even if factual causation was established, much of the Claimant’s loss should be deemed irrecoverable as a matter of public policy because it arose from the consequences of the Claimant’s own criminal conduct. After a careful analysis of the facts, the court preferred the Defendant’s case on causation. As a result, it did not have to go on to consider the application of the ex turpi maxim. It assessed general damages at £48,000 and dismissed the claim for aggravated damages with reference to Richard v Howie [2004] EWCA Civ 1127. The unusual feature of the case was that at the time he was subject to the abuse, and for some time afterwards, the Claimant and another boy effectively blackmailed the abuser when they realised they could demand from him rewards of money and material possessions in return for keeping quiet about the abuse. The Defendant contended that it should be given credit for the sums thereby extorted from the abuser by the Claimant. It was prayed in aid in support of this submission that the Claimant had himself described the payments in his witness statement to the police as “compensation”. Such a submission is so obviously unattractive that it is perhaps surprising that it was ever advanced and it is not at all surprising that it was rejected by the judge, who held (a) that the payments were gifts and hence could not properly be considered as compensation and (b) that as a matter of public policy the Claimant’s damages should not be reduced as the Defendant suggested. The judge reached the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. The payments were not gifts; they were, on the facts, part of a bargain between the Claimant and the abuser whereby the abuser sought to buy the Claimant’s silence so that he could continue to perpetrate abuse (of the Claimant and of others). The real reason the Defendant was not entitled to credit for the payments was that they did not relate to the subject matter of the claim, which was damages for the effect of the abuse on the Claimant in terms of pain, suffering, anguish etc. The abuser made the payments so that he could continue his abuse, not to compensate the Claimant for the effects of that abuse. Because the Defendant’s contention could have been dismissed for that reason, the resort to public policy was unnecessary and possibly unhelpful for future cases where the same or similar issues arise. There may be cases where it would be appropriate for a defendant to be given credit for payments made by an abuser. Suppose an abuser later repented of their abuse and wrote to their former victim expressing contrition for the harm they had caused and enclosing a cheque which the victim banked. Such cases are likely to be exceptional, but as and when they do occur then on what principle of public policy should a defendant who was vicariously liable for the abuser’s actions not be entitled to have that payment taken into account? There will be cases at the margins which will be difficult to decide, but the principle that should be applied remains whether the payments were genuinely compensatory or whether, as here, they were really the price that the abuser was willing to pay to avoid detection. A victim extorting money from an abuser may be unusual but it is not unprecedented. A case that sticks in the mind from criminal law lectures is R v Camplin (“the chapati pan case”) where the defendant murdered his abuser, who he had been blackmailing in return for not revealing the abuse of another boy called “Jumbo”: see the report from the Court of Appeal [1978] QB 254 at 257C. Many of the abuse cases currently working their way through the courts involve wealthy abusers who may have made payments to their victims. How to treat those payments is therefore an issue which the courts are likely to have to address again before too long.
“The court cannot ignore that insurers are professional litigants, who can properly be held responsible for any blatant disregard of their own commercial interests.” - Gentry v Miller & Anor [2016] EWCA Civ 141 at 34. Such was the warning sent to insurers by the Court of Appeal earlier this month in allowing a Claimant’s appeal against a decision to set aside default judgment in what the Defendant’s insurer alleged was a fraudulent claim. The Facts The Claimant, Mr Gentry, alleged that he was in a road traffic accident with a Mr Miller on 17th March 2013 in a claims notification form valuing the claim at under £10,000. On 2nd April 2013 Mr Miller’s insurer admitted liability. On 8th April the Claimant’s solicitors wrote requesting immediate payment of the pre-accident value of his car (being £16,000) and warning that until that was received he was hiring a replacement vehicle under a credit hire facility. Proceedings were issued against Mr Miller alone on 3rd July and on 8th August the Claimant obtained default judgement. At no point in this period did the insurer instruct solicitors and it replied to only one of seven letters. In late August the insurer made a voluntary interim payment of £14,000 and a Part 36 Offer of £1,870. A further interim payment of £2,000 was ordered in September and paid. At a disposal hearing on 17th October 2013, DJ Benson awarded the Claimant damages of £75,089 consisting mostly of hire charges. On receipt of notification of this award the insurer instructed solicitors who, on 25th November, issued an application referring to CPR 13.3 (1). On 10th February 2014 those same solicitors applied to come off the record for Mr Miller, to add the insurer as the second defendant and to set aside both the default judgment and the order of 17th October. For the first time they alleged that Mr Gentry and Mr Miller were well known to each other and that the claim was a fraud. The application to set aside was granted by DJ Henthorn on 17th March 2014 and on 4th February 2015 Mr Recorder Gregory (as he then was) dismissed the Claimant’s appeal. The decision of the Court of Appeal The Court of Appeal considered the applications under CPR 13.3 and 39.3. In relation to the former Vos LJ was satisfied that the Defendant had demonstrated that it had a real prospect of successfully defending the claim but had to consider under CPR 13.3 (2) whether the application was made promptly. The delay to the application of 25th November was inexcusable. In particular Vos LJ noted that the insurer: Failed to adduce any evidence of its postal systems to explain how documents might not have reached it; Must have been aware after admitting liability at the beginning of April 2013 that it was at risk if it did not defend or attempt to settle the claim; Did not instruct solicitors or investigate fraud in the seven months after that admission; Was repeatedly warned of hire charge risks so that the suggestion that it believed the claim to be small and therefore impliedly not worth investigating did not hold water; In ignoring those warnings allowed the claim to grow; While not notified of the default judgment of 8th August as promptly as it might have been, clearly knew that proceedings were on foot when it made a Part 36 offer on 22nd August; Must also have been aware of proceedings when it paid the interim payment ordered by the court; Upon receiving costs schedules on 19th and 23rd September sent “ahead of the upcoming application hearing”, made no enquiry as to what that hearing was about. The court’s analysis then continued by application of the Denton test. It was common ground that Mr Miller’s default in not filing an acknowledgment of service was serious or significant. The fact that it was not served with the proceedings gave the insurer some reasonable excuse or explanation but it could and should have protected itself when it knew proceedings were being issued by appointing solicitors to accept service on behalf of Mr Miller. Finally, looking to all of the circumstances and in particular factors a) and b) it was held that “insurers are in a particularly good position to conduct litigation efficiently and proportionately and to comply with rules and orders”. It cannot avail an insurer who knows the risk from the moment it admits liability to say it was not a party at the time. The application under CPR 39.3 to set aside the order of 17th October, despite the insurer having notice, (although not a copy), of that order since 25th October, was not made until 26th February 2014. It had not been made promptly and therefore, even if the insurer could show it had a good reason for not attending the trial and a reasonable prospect of success, the application could not be granted. Again, it would in any event probably have failed the third stage of the Denton test. Key Lessons There are two key lessons for insurers arising out of this decision. The first is the reminder at the start of this post that insurers will be treated as professional litigants capable of protecting their own interests. The second is that a credible allegation of fraud is not a trump card. When weighing the competing policy interests of the desirability of testing the allegation of fraud against the requirement that there be finality of litigation, the latter at least can outweigh the former. At some point the insurer must be left to bring its own action in relation to the fraud.
Evidence and interim payment applications
10 March 2016 Edward-Bishop-QC case report, procedure (0)
The High Court has given useful guidance (which serves as a warning) to defendants on their evidential obligations when defending applications for interim payments. In Sellar-Elliot v Howling [2016] EWHC 443 (QB) Sweeney J refused permission to appeal an interim payment order by Master Cook and held that it was not enough for a defendant to rely – when defending an application for an interim payment – on the defence (supported by a statement of truth) and a witness statement from a solicitor confirming that expert evidence supporting the defence had been obtained. The defendant must go further and provide the court with some reasoned response to the claimant’s expert evidence (which had been unilaterally served to support the application in this case). Even though – in accordance with court directions – the defendant had since served expert evidence disputing the claimant’s points, the court had to judge the interim payment application on the evidence before it at the time of the application. In other words, and drawing on the Court of Appeal’s decision in Test Claimants in the FII Group Litigation v Revenue and Customs Comrs (No 2) [2012] 1 WLR 2375, the court must be satisfied that if the case went to trial on the material before the judge at the time of the application that the claimant would succeed and would obtain a substantial amount of money. Defendants therefore bear an evidential burden “to raise matters, on the basis of evidence, which would justify the court in concluding that a claimant would not succeed in obtaining substantial damages” Sweeney J held that: “…the mere fact that the Defendant’s causation case was supported by reputable expert opinion, and that the Defendant’s expert would dispute the Claimant’s expert evidence at trial, did not mean that, on the evidence, the Claimant had failed to persuade [Master Cook] that the requisite test was met” The message for defendants would seem to be therefore that when a claimant chooses unilaterally to serve expert evidence to support an interim payment application, defendants must serve an argued and detailed expert response, even when the court has already directed that expert evidence is scheduled to be disclosed at a later date The case is on Bailli: http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2016/443.html&query=title+(+Sellar-Elliott+)+and+title+(+v+)+and+title+(+Howling+)&method=boolean