Little and Others v George Little Sebire and Company
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 19 October 1999 |
| Date | 19 October 1999 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Before Mr David Foskett, QC.
Costs - indemnity costs - power to award enhanced interest
Where a claimant achieved more than he had proposed in his offer to settle, the court, exercising its powers to award enhanced interest under rule 36.21 of the Civil Procedure Rules, could consider first the proposition that enhanced interest of 10 per cent above base rate be awarded on the whole of the judgment, excluding interest, from the earliest date when it could be awarded, and then evaluate whether the effect of doing so would itself work an injustice or result in a disproportionate advantage to the claimant or a disproportionate disadvantage to the defendant.
Mr David Foskett, QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Queen's Bench Division, so held in a reserved judgment when awarding indemnity costs under rule 36.21 after he gave judgment for the claimants, Richard Little, John Bennie Smith and Gerrard Christopher Wade, in their action against the defendants, George Little Sebire and Co, claiming damages for negligence.
Mr Giles Goodfellow for the claimants; Mr Patrick Lawrence for the defendant.
HIS LORDSHIP said that as with all powers conferred by the Civil Procedure Rules, rule 36.21 had to be exercised to give effect to the overriding objective contained in rule 1.2(a).
Many of the features of the overriding objective were more directly applicable to the pre-trial and trial periods of a case than to a decision made after a case had effectively been concluded.
On the other hand, since one of the factors mentioned in rule 1.2(a) was the saving of expense, the powers conferred by the rules...
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OMV Petrom SA v Glencore International AG
...period." 14 Finally, Lord Woolf refused to endorse Mr David Foskett QC's approach in Little v. George Little Sebire & Co The Times 17th November 1999 that the court should take 10% above base as the starting point. The McPhilemy case 15 The McPhilemy case concerned a libel action where th......
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Petrotrade Inc. v Texaco Ltd
...on damages - CPR r 36.21 The following case is referred to in the judgment of Lord Woolf MR: Little v George Little Sebire & Co The Times, 17 November 1999 No additional cases were cited in APPEAL from Langley J The claimants, Petrotrade Inc, sought damages from the defendants, Texaco Ltd, ......