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

Lady Justice Andrews:

INTRODUCTION

This appeal against the order of Deputy District Judge Lenon KC (“the Judge”) refusing the Appellant an extension of time for service of the claim form, and striking out her claim for personal injuries, was transferred by the Judge to the Court of Appeal under CPR r.52.53 when he granted permission to appeal. As the Judge recognised, the appeal raises important points of principle and practice concerning (1) the period of time within which a claim form must be served and (2) the correct approach to applications for an extension of time for service of a claim form when the claim has been brought within the prescribed limitation period, but the court office has delayed sending out the claim form and/or the claimant is unaware that the claim form has been issued.

The question at the heart of this appeal is: “what is the date on which the claim form is “issued” for the purposes of CPR rules 7.2 and 7.5?”

The transfer of the appeal to this Court was accepted by my Lord, Coulson LJ, on 12 March 2025. He also gave the Appellant permission to rely upon further evidence, namely a letter from the court to her former solicitors dated 30 January 2024, which had been referred to at the hearing below but had not been included in the court bundle for that hearing.

At the hearing of the appeal, after the Court had heard and considered the oral submissions of Counsel for the Appellant, Mr Fry, we decided that it was unnecessary to hear from Counsel for the Respondents, Mr Tobin. The parties were duly informed that the appeal would be dismissed, with reasons to be provided in judgments to follow. These are my reasons for concurring with my Lords in that decision.

In summary, for reasons I shall explain more fully, the Judge was right to find that the date of issue of the claim form was the date on which it was sealed, and not the date when it was sent out by the court office. In the absence of any evidence that the seal had been impermissibly affixed to the claim form on a later date than the one which it bore, the date stamped on the sealed claim form was conclusive evidence of the date of issue, as the Judge held. In consequence, the Appellant’s solicitors (Footnote: ¹) received the claim form after the time for service prescribed by CPR r.7.5 had already expired.

That being so, the only basis on which the Judge could have afforded the Appellant any relief from the consequences of late service would be if he had granted an extension of time for service under CPR r.7.6(3). A number of decisions of this Court have made it clear that the rules relating to relief from sanctions do not apply to the scenario where service of a claim form is late or otherwise invalid, recent examples being Robertson v Google LLC [2025] EWCA Civ 1262 (in which many of the earlier authorities were cited) and Bellway Homes Ltd v Occupiers of Samuel Garside House [2025] EWCA Civ 1347.

On the evidence, despite the fact that in practical terms the Appellant’s solicitors could not serve the claim form until it was in their possession, it was open to the Judge to conclude that they had not taken all reasonable steps to comply with CPR 7.5 for the reasons that he gave. In considering the reasonableness of the solicitors’ conduct the Judge was not constrained to look only at the period after the claim form came into their possession. Nor was he obliged to look only at the period between its issue and its receipt. He was entitled to take into account the entire background, including the fact that proceedings were brought on the very last day of the limitation period, and the lengthy delays which occurred between the lodging of the unsealed claim form and the issue of the sealed claim form, which he found were largely, though not exclusively, due to inactivity on the part of the solicitors.

In my judgment, the conclusion reached by the Judge was not only open to him on the evidence, it was plainly right.