QB-2019-000783 - [2025] EWHC 2038 (KB)

This is an application by the claimant in a personal injury case for the defendant to pay penalty interest under Spanish law on the awarded compensation sum.

The claimant is a British national who has been anonymised as DHV due to being a protected party. He brings the case through his litigation friend and mother WTX. The defendant is the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (“MIB”), which stands in for the Spanish guarantee fund. The claimant is again represented by Mr Vincent KC and Mr Pickering; the defendant by Ms Wyles KC and Ms Blackshaw. The court is grateful once more to all counsel.

This short judgment follows the substantive judgment I sent out to the parties on 5 February 2025 following a lengthy trial before me towards the end of the Michaelmas Term of 2024. This judgment must be read in conjunction with that judgment (DHV v MIB [2025] EWHC 2002 KB). By agreement, the question of penalty interest had to await the court’s substantive judgment. The issue was itemised as Issue 14 in the trial list of issues and framed as follows:

When the Insurance Compensation Consortium has to satisfy the compensation as a guarantee fund, it shall be understood that it is in default only in the event that a period of three months has elapsed from the date on which it is claimed the payment of the compensation without the Consortium having proceeded to pay it in accordance with its specific regulations, and the obligation to compensate for delay in the non-payment of the minimum amount shall not be applicable to it. In the remainder when the Consortium intervenes as a guarantee fund and, without exception, when the Consortium contracts as direct insurer, the present article shall be fully applicable.”