CA-2025-000452 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1413

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The claim was for damages for personal injuries sustained by the Appellant in a road traffic accident on 2 December 2019. The primary limitation period therefore expired on 2 December 2022: section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980.

The Appellant instructed solicitors late in the day, on 22 November 2022, and on 29 or 30 November 2022 they sent a claim form to the County Court Money Claims Centre (“CMCC”) accompanied by a Help with Fees application. These documents were received by the CMCC on 2 December 2022, the last day of the limitation period. By virtue of Practice Direction 7A, paragraph 6.1 (which reflects the case law on when a claim is “brought” for the purposes of the Limitation Act 1980) the claim was brought (just) in time for limitation purposes, because the date which counts for those purposes is the date on which the claim form, as later issued, is received in the court office.

On 16 December 2022, the CMCC requested further information concerning the Appellant’s Help with Fees application. That information was not provided until 15 March 2023. There were then substantial further delays. These were punctuated by abortive attempts by the Appellant’s solicitors to pay the sum of £1,360 which they were informed by the CMCC in August 2023 was the Appellant’s required contribution towards the court fees. Eventually, on 12 December 2023, there was a telephone conversation between a member of staff at the CMCC and the solicitor with conduct of the case, which resulted in the payment being processed. An email receipt was sent to the Appellant’s solicitors on that date which indicated that the claim had been allotted a claim number, K21ZA523. That number was different from the “Help with Fees” reference appearing in earlier correspondence (HWF-NNE-W07). The same claim number was used in subsequent correspondence between the solicitors and the court office.

The seal which appears on the face of the claim form is dated 13 December 2023. The Judge found that was the date on which it was affixed. However, for reasons that have never been ascertained, the sealed claim form was not posted to the Appellant’s solicitors until 2 April 2024. In the intervening period, notwithstanding the processing of the payment in December 2023, the CMCC sent a letter to the Appellant’s solicitors on 30 January 2024 which referred to the Help with Fees application received on 2 December 2022. The letter stated that the CMCC was unable to approve the request “for the following reason”. However, it gave no reason. The letter went on to request the solicitors to “resubmit both the fee and new issue documents for processing” stating “we are unable to take your contribution fee without your claim form to process”.

The solicitors did not respond to that communication until 21 February 2024 when they sent an email to the CMCC under the subject: “RE URGENT REQUEST Claim Number K21ZA523” (and then for good measure setting out all the other reference numbers appearing on earlier correspondence). The email confirmed that the court had taken payment of the fees over the telephone (attaching the receipt of 12 December), and that the court forms had already been sent for issue, but attached them again “for your convenience”. It also said: “please note, a claim number has now also been provided as K21ZA523” (the letter from the court had not referred to the claim number). Finally, the solicitors’ email referred to a telephone conversation on the previous day (20 February) in which the solicitor with conduct of the case had been informed by someone on the court helpline that there had been a court error “because the payments line did not update the records to show that payment had already been taken by the court and that the matter should now be expedited.”

Despite that conversation and the solicitors’ letter providing the evidence of payment, nothing happened for over a month. On 27 March 2024 there was one last attempt by the Appellant’s solicitors to find out why they had not received a sealed claim form. The solicitor with conduct of the matter rang the court office. He was told by a member of staff that a query had been logged on the system records on 29 February 2024, that the matter was still currently being investigated, and that the court would email him with any updates as and when they occurred. An email was sent by the court office to the Appellant’s solicitors on 2 April 2024, apologising for the inconvenience caused and confirming that the fee had been paid. It said that the sealed claim form (in triplicate) had been sent to the solicitors on that day. The sealed claim form was posted to the solicitors under cover of a letter dated 2 April 2024 which referred to “Case Number K21ZA523”, and stated that it hoped that their query had now been resolved.

If, as the Judge found, the claim form was issued on 13 December, the date on which it was sealed, the four-month period for service of the claim form pursuant to CPR r.7.5 expired on 13 April 2024. The solicitors received the sealed claim form two days later, on 15 April. It is unclear why there was such a long delay between the date of posting and the date of receipt. However, there is no evidence of the solicitors taking any steps to find out why the letter had not arrived when they might have expected it to arrive in the ordinary course of post, nor of their even considering making a precautionary application to the court for an extension of time for service.

The first time that the solicitors became aware that the sealed claim form bore a date which was more than four months earlier, was when they opened the letter and saw it. Instead of immediately seeking an extension of time for service, on the following day, 16 April 2024, the solicitors issued an application for relief from sanctions under CPR 3.8, 3.9 and/or 3.1(2)(a). It was not until 22 November 2024 that they sought to amend that application to include an application to extend time for service of the claim form under CPR 7.6. The Judge benignly permitted the application to proceed as if it had been made under CPR r.7.6 from the outset.

The Appellant’s solicitors filed and served the application for relief from sanctions on the Respondents’ solicitors on 17 April 2024. That appears to have been the first time that the Respondents knew anything about proceedings having been issued. Surprisingly, there had been hardly any communication between the parties’ solicitors. A letter before claim had been sent on or around 8 March 2023, (over three months after the claim form had been lodged with the court office) and on 23 May 2023 the Respondents’ solicitors had chased for service of issued proceedings, but the Appellant’s solicitors had responded citing delays due to court backlogs. One might have expected them to have provided an update to their counterparts at some point thereafter, even if only to tell them about the problems they were experiencing with the CMCC, but there was no further inter-party correspondence until the application for relief from sanctions was served on the Respondents’ solicitors. Until then the Respondents had no reason to suppose that the claim of which they had been notified back in March 2023 had ever been issued. Over a month then elapsed before the Appellant’s solicitors purported to effect service of the claim form (and Particulars of Claim dated 30 May 2024) on the Respondents’ solicitors on 31 May 2024.

On 10 June 2024 the Respondents served an acknowledgement of service contesting the court’s jurisdiction to hear the claim. On 17 June they issued an application under CPR 11, though strictly speaking that was unnecessary (see Bellway Homes, above.)