BL-2021-000228 - [2025] EWHC 2222 (Ch)

Mr Blake submits that limitation is relevant to:

On the claimants’ own case, they terminated the relevant agreements on 13 November 2017. Claims alleged to arise under the various agreements must have accrued no later than the date on which they are said to have been terminated. Although other pleaded claims may have arisen in the period after termination, the acts complained of seem from the Particulars of Claim to have occurred in early 2018. Any cause of action raised in the First Proceedings, issued on 29 June 2018, must have accrued by that time. By 1 July 2024, the end of the extension granted on the Second Extension Application, six years had passed since the issue of the First Proceedings.

Contract claims are subject to a six-year limitation period from accrual of the cause of action. Contractual claims concerning pre-termination matters will have accrued, at the latest, on 13 November 2017. Other pleaded complaints concern acts in the period January to March 2018 and causes of action referrable to these acts will have accrued in early 2018. So far as the pleading complains of “an unlawful means conspiracy and/or have unlawfully interfered with the Claimants’ economic interests” by reference to “the facts and matters pleaded above”, a six-year limitation period applicable to these tortious allegations would expire in the first quarter of 2024.

This is a case in which the second defendant “might be deprived of a defence of limitation” if the Extension Orders are upheld, so the principles applicable to extension cases where the limitation period is expiring are engaged. It is not for the Court to decide the limitation points, and nor is it appropriate to consider each of the asserted claims separately.