KB-2021-000741 - [2025] EWHC 2257 (KB)

The Represented Claimants submit that there were fanciful pleas in the course of the case. They point to only two of them when there were many allegations in the case. Whilst the Court did not accept the submissions that were made in respect of those two allegations, this does not take the case out of the norm. It was submitted in respect of another two averments out of the many that they were untrue. It is not accepted that there was anything in the rejection of the JBL’s case in this regard that took the case out of the norm. This was a hard-fought piece of litigation where not every point of the Claimants was accepted. It is a common incident of litigation of this kind that not all the points succeed and some are decisively rejected.

The Represented Claimants relied upon a notice to admit which was served on 2 February 2022. The document was not a conventional notice to admit in that it was not confined to the admission of facts. It was a notice to admit that various facts, if proven, would amount to a breach or breaches of contract. Had it been the case that there had been a notice to admit various facts, and the proof of those facts was unnecessary but added substantially to the cost of the litigation, then different considerations might apply. In the instant case, the failure to accede to the notice to admit was not unreasonable and/or did not merit a special order as to costs, let alone indemnity costs.