Nield v Loveday
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | SIR ANTHONY MAY,Mr Justice Keith,MR JUSTICE KEITH |
| Judgment Date | 13 July 2011 |
| Neutral Citation | [2011] EWHC 2324 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | CO/7927/2010 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 13 July 2011 |
[2011] EWHC 2324 (Admin)
Sir Anthony May (President of the Queen's Bench Division)
Mr Justice Keith
CO/7927/2010
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
MR M GRANT (instructed by Keoghs) appeared on behalf of the Claimants
MR R CRAVEN (instructed by T Llewellyn Jones) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant
MR D HARRIS (instructed by Cameron, Jones, Hussell & Howe) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendant
A P P R O V E D JUDGMENT
Mr Justice Keith will give the first judgment.
One of the reforms introduced following Lord Woolf's proposals for the streamlining of civil proceedings was the requirement for various documents to be verified by a statement of truth. The sanction for verifying as true a statement in a document which was false without an honest belief in its truth is contempt of court. There have occasionally been proceedings for that sort of contempt, but this is the first time, so we have been told, that a contested case of contempt over statements in documents to be used in civil proceedings has come before the Divisional Court. The case reflects what may be the desire of insurance companies to crack down on litigants who they believe are trying to con them out of thousands of pounds.
The case comes about following an unexceptional road traffic accident. The first defendant, Graham Loveday (who is known as Jeff because Jeffrey is his middle name), was injured in it. He brought proceedings in the county court against the first claimant, Edward Nield, who was the driver of the other car. Mr Loveday is said to have inflated his claim by grossly exaggerating the extent of his injuries. The three documents which contain statements of truth falsely verifying his injuries, in whose truth he is alleged not to have had an honest belief, were his particulars of claim, a schedule of loss and his witness statement. Mr Loveday's wife, Susan Loveday, the second defendant, is said to have assisted her husband in what is claimed to be his deception by making an untruthful statement of her own corroborating Mr Loveday's account of the effect of his injuries on his life. That statement contained a statement of truth from her verifying its contents. She has recently admitted contempt of court on the basis that when she signed the statement of truth, she knew that some of the things she was confirming in the statement were either not true or no longer true. Mr Nield and his insurers, the second claimant, Acromas Insurance Co Ltd("the insurers"), took the view that it would be a disproportionate use of the court's time for each and every allegation of contempt against her to be litigated, and they have therefore accepted the basis on which Mrs Loveday admitted her contempt. Accordingly, they ask the court to decide the appropriate sanction for her contempt on that factual basis.
Mr Loveday does not dispute that at least some of the facts that he verified as true had ceased to be true at the time he verified them. He acknowledges that he would have realised that they were false had he known what he was purporting to verify. His case is that he did not know what he was purporting to verify, as he verified the relevant documents either without reading them at all, or without reading them sufficiently. There is medical evidence which is said to lend support to the suggestion that the depression which he was suffering from at the time, could well have made him sign documents of the kind he did sign without reading them through beforehand. On the other hand, the critical document he signed was his witness statement, and that was apparently annotated by him. He originally claimed in his defence that his wife had annotated it. He subsequently admitted in a witness statement that the annotations had been made by him after all. In his oral evidence, he acknowledged that the annotations looked a bit like his handwriting, but he could not say whether he had in fact made them, because he could not remember whether he had done so or not.
With that introduction I turn to the relevant facts, though since para. 2 of the Practice Direction supplementing Ord. 52 of the Rules of the High Court required the claim form to identify separately each of the alleged acts of contempt, the untruths which Mr Loveday is alleged to have told must be limited to those set out in the claim form. While I am referring to rules of procedure, I should identify the rules in the Civil Procedure Rules which require certain documents to be verified, and which provide for a false verification to constitute a contempt of court. Rule 22.1(1) provides (so far as is material):
"The following documents must be verified by a statement of truth—
(a) a statement of case;…
(c) a witness statement…"
Rule 22.1(4) provides (so far as is material):
"…a statement of truth is a statement that –
(a) the party putting forward the document;
(b) in the case of a witness statement, the maker of the witness statement
believes the facts stated in the document are true."
Rule 32.14(1) provides:
"Proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against a person if he makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth."
As Sir Richard Scott V-C (as he then was) noted in Malgar Ltd v R.E. Leach (Engineering) Ltd [2000], C. & P. Rep. 39, this did not make any change to the law of contempt, and it was still necessary for it to be shown that in addition to knowing that what you were saying was false, you had to have known that what you were saying was likely to interfere with the course of justice. The standard of proof, of course, in respect of each of the elements of contempt, is proof beyond reasonable doubt, the burden of proof of that being on the party who is bringing the proceedings for contempt.
The accident which gave rise to these proceedings took place on 1 April 2006. Mr Nield drove his car out of the forecourt of a petrol station into the path of Mr Loveday's Landrover Discovery, which was passing at the time. Liability was promptly admitted by Mr Nield's insurers, but what remained in issue were the extent of Mr Loveday's injuries, whether they had been caused by the accident, and the extent of his consequential loss.
Proceedings were eventually issued by Mr Loveday against Mr Nield in Basingstoke County Court on 13 March 2009. The particulars of claim were verified by a statement of truth signed by Mr Loveday on 3 March 2009 in these terms:
"I believe that the facts stated in this [sic] Particulars of Claim are true."
The injuries which he claimed to have sustained included "a [soft] tissue injury to his neck and lower back". As a result, he was said to be "often reliant on a wheelchair for travel outside the home as he is unable to walk more than a very short distance". The particulars of claim said that his damages were likely to exceed £50,000.
A schedule of financial loss was attached to the particulars of claim. It was verified by a statement of truth signed by Mr Loveday on 14 January 2009 in these terms:
"I believe that the facts stated in this Schedule of Loss and Damage are true."
It said that prior to the accident, Mr Loveday had been working as a driver at Evans Logistics. He had injured his hand about 10 months before the accident and had been off work during that time. However, his GP had recently certified him as fit to return to work, and he had started to work for Evans Logistics again on the day of the accident. Indeed, it was on his way home from work, after preparing for the next day's driving, that the accident had occurred. His salary had been agreed that day with Keith Evans, Evans Logistics' director, at £25,600 a year.
Mr Loveday's witness statement in support of his claim was verified by a statement of truth which he signed on 7 August 2009 in these terms:
"I believe that the facts stated in this Witness Statement are true."
It referred to an injury to his back in 1997, but it said that his condition had improved relatively quickly, and Mr Loveday believed that he had made a full recovery from it. As for how he felt in the immediate aftermath of the accident, Mr Loveday said that after a fortnight he was getting pain in his lower back. He had tried going to the dentist for treatment for other injuries sustained in the accident, but the pain (presumably the back pain) was so serious that he could not sit through the sessions long enough to get proper treatment.
The important part of his witness statement for present purposes related to how he was in August 2009 when he signed his witness statement. He said that when he went out, he had to use a wheelchair if he was going any distance. He relied fully on his wife to help him to get both indoors and outside. The pain was such that he could walk virtually no distance at all, and he struggled with any stairs or steps. His wife had to help him with the stairs at home, which meant that she had to take him up to bed every night. Other than that, he did not go upstairs anymore. There were a number of steep steps from the street to their front door. His wife had to help him up and down those as well. His wife had become his full-time carer. Indeed, she would not leave him at home on his own, not even to go to the supermarket. In fairness to Mr Loveday, it should be added, in case it was thought that Mr...
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