Amjad v UK Insurance Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Court | King's Bench Division |
| Neutral Citation | [2023] EWHC 2832 (KB) |
| Year | 2023 |
2023 Oct 19; Nov 10
Costs - Order for costs - Enforcement - Qualified one-way costs shifting - Claimant bringing successful personal injury claim and partially successful non-personal injury claims - Judge making costs order in favour of defendant and permitting defendant to enforce order in sum exceeding damages awarded - Whether claimant entitled to qualified one-way costs shifting protection - Whether case falling within exception to qualified one-way costs shifting - Whether non-personal injury claim “for the benefit of the claimant” -
Following a road traffic accident the claimant brought proceedings against the defendant which included, among other things, a claim for damages for personal injury and a claim for damages for the cost of hiring a replacement vehicle from a credit hire company while his vehicle was being repaired. The judge allowed some of the claims but dismissed the credit hire charges claim and entered judgment for the claimant in a sum that was less than the CPR Pt 36 offer which the defendant had made. Accordingly, the judge ordered the claimant to pay the defendant’s costs from the expiry of the offer. Since the claimant’s proceedings included a claim for damages for personal injuries, the qualified one-way costs shifting (“QOCS”) regime in Section II of CPR Pt 44F1 applied, with the consequence that, subject to the exceptions in CPR rr 44.15 and 44.16, any costs order made against the claimant would only be enforceable to the extent that it did not exceed any damages which he had been awarded. The judge found that both the exception in CPR r 44.16(2)(a) and the exception in CPR r 44.16(2)(b) applied since (a) the proceedings included a claim which was “made for the financial benefit of a person other than the claimant”, namely the credit hire company, and (b) the claim was made for the benefit of the claimant other than a claim to which Section II applied. Exercising his discretion, the judge granted the defendant permission under CPR r 44.16(2) to enforce the costs order against the claimant in a sum which exceeded the damages that had been awarded.
On appeal by the claimant—
Held, allowing the appeal, that, on a plain reading of the words in CPR r 44.16(2), particularly the use of the word “or” between sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), and taking into account that both sub-paragraphs required the court to determine who benefited from the relevant head of claim, sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) were generally mutually exclusive; that whether sub-paragraph (a) or sub-paragraph (b) applied depended on an assessment of to whom the majority of the benefit of a claim was going; that, thus, a claim for damages for the cost of hiring a replacement vehicle from a credit hire company would fall within sub-paragraph (b) if the benefit of the award for credit hire charges was going to the claimant (which would be the case if the claimant had paid the credit hire company’s charges himself) but would fall within sub-paragraph (a) if the benefit of the award was going to the credit hire company (which would be the case if the claimant had not paid the credit hire company’s charges and the claimant’s liability to the credit hire company was illusory or technical); that, in the present case, under the terms of the claimant’s credit hire agreement the credit hire company clearly would have gained the whole of the benefit of any award of damages in respect of credit hire charges, the only benefit gained by the claimant being the eradication of his residual liability under the credit hire agreement; that, therefore, sub-paragraph (a) but not sub-paragraph (b) applied to the order for costs made against the claimant; that, however, since the judge had not considered making a non-party costs order against the credit hire company he had erred in exercising his discretion under sub-paragraph (a) by permitting the defendant to enforce the costs order against the claimant in a sum which exceeded the damages that had been awarded; and that, accordingly, that part of the judge’s order would be set aside and enforcement of the costs order would be capped in accordance with CPR r 44.14(1) (post, paras 57–63, 91–93, 98, 103).
The following cases are referred to in the judgment:
ABC v Derbyshire County Council
Achille v Lawn Tennis Association Services Ltd
Adelekun v Ho
Afriyie v Comr of Police for the City of London
Aiden Shipping Co Ltd v Interbulk Ltd [
Brown v Comr of Police of the Metropolis
Chartwell Estate Agents Ltd v Fergies Properties SA
Clearway Drainage Systems Ltd v Miles Smith Ltd
Deutsche Bank AG v Sebastian Holdings Inc
Deutsche Bank AG v Sebastian Holdings Inc
Dimond v Lovell [
Farrell v Birmingham City Council
Gass v Bobi (unreported) 21 June 2021,
Giles v Thompson [
Grizzly Business Ltd v Stena Drilling Ltd
Henderson v Foxworth Investments Ltd
Jeffreys v Comr of Police of the Metropolis
Lagden v O’Connor
Mee v Jones
Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd (Practice Note)
On-Hire Ltd v Smithson (unreported) 20 May 2022,
Pattni v First Leicester Buses Ltd
Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance plc v T & N Ltd
Shahzad v Royal and Sun Alliance (unreported) 6 April 2023,
Siddiqui v Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford
Singh v Dass
Symphony Group plc v Hodgson [
Volpi v Volpi
XYZ v Travelers Insurance Co Ltd
The following additional cases were cited in argument or referred to in the skeleton arguments:
Dymocks Franchise Systems (NSW) Pty Ltd v Todd
English v Emery Reimbold & Strick Ltd (Practice Note)
Hussain v EUI Ltd
McBride v UK Insurance Ltd
Roache v News Group Newspapers Ltd [
TGA Chapman Ltd v Christopher [
Tanfern Ltd v Cameron-MacDonald (Practice Note) [
U v Liverpool City Council (Practice Note)
Wokingham Borough Council v Arshad
APPEAL from Judge Pearce sitting in the County Court at Manchester
By a claim form issued in late 2020 the claimant, Muhammad Tanveer Amjad, brought a claim for damages for personal injuries, repairs to his car, some hire charges and some loss of profit arising out of a road traffic accident on 4 July 2019, against the insured of the defendant, UK Insurance Ltd. On 20 October 2021 the court allocated the case to the multi-track. By his judgment of 27 July 2022 and sealed order of 16 September 2022 Judge Pearce, sitting in the County Court at Manchester, rejected the defendant’s assertion of fundamental dishonesty pursuant to section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 and awarded the claimant damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity: £2,500; car repairs: £5,231; car hire charges: £1,549; three weeks’ loss of profit as a taxi driver: £750, totalling £10,029.64. However, the judge rejected the claimant’s claim for approximately £51,600 in respect of credit hire charges for a replacement vehicle while his own car was being repaired. Since the award of damages was less than the CPR Pt 36 offer of £15,700 which the defendant had made, which expired on 14 May 2020, the judge ordered the claimant to pay the defendant’s costs from the expiry of the offer, pursuant to CPR r 44.14(1). The judge also granted permission to the defendant pursuant to CPR r 44.16(2) to enforce the costs against the claimant up to a maximum of £15,000, so around £5,000 more than the damages and interest awarded, therefore, above the qualified one-way costs shifting cap which applied to the claimant.
By an appellant’s notice the claimant appealed on nine grounds. Permission to appeal was refused on the papers by Heather Williams J on 11 November 2022. On the hearing of his renewed application, the claimant was granted permission by Collins-Rice J on 6 March 2023 on ground 9, which was that the judge failed to take into account or give appropriate weight to relevant factors: namely, that the claimant was a person of modest means (the judge accepting for other purposes that he earned approximately £250 per week); the judge had accepted the claim was made for the financial benefit of another but had only given an order against the claimant, who had remained liable to the hire company for the entire amount; and the claimant had not been found guilty of any gross...
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Yehuda Tescher v Direct Accident Management Ltd
...other than the claimant. He regarded paragraph 12.2 as little more than a statement of the obvious. 58 The second case is Amjad v UK Insurance Ltd [2023] EWHC 2832 (KB) although it is not a non-party costs case and so is not directly on point. Here parts of an RTA claim, including a claim f......
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Kindertons Ltd v Georgina Murtagh
... ... 2 Esure is a company which provides motor insurance. Kindertons describes itself as “a specialist in accident aftercare and mobility solutions to the insurance industry and related sectors” ... 40 As Ritchie J observed in Amjad v UK Insurance Limited [2023] EWHC 2832 (KB) : “58. In CHC [Credit Hire Company] charges claims the claimant can only ... ...
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Kindertons Limited v Georgina Murtagh & Anor
...be faced by claimants unable to afford to pay the lower Basic Hire Rate [BHR] up front. 40. As Ritchie J observed in Amjad v UK Insurance Limited [2023] EWHC 2832 (KB): “58. In CHC [Credit Hire Company] charges claims the claimant can only recover damages if he has a lawful and sufficiently......