The fixed recoverable costs regime applies to low-value personal injury claims that exit the RTA and EL/PL portals and proceed on the multi-track, a circuit judge has ruled.
The case, Qader & Ors v Esure Services Ltd [2015] EWHC B18 (TCC), concerned a claim by three claimants for damages put at between £5,000 and £15,000, but the defendant insurer alleged that the driver had deliberately induced the accident by braking sharply.
A deputy district judge directed that the case be allocated to the multi-track, listed it for a case and costs management conference and also set a date by which budgets had to be filed.
The matter then came before District Judge Salmon, who ordered that CPR 45.29A fixed costs would apply to the claimant’s costs and not costs management. Refusing permission to appeal, he said the rule was clear on its face that the determining factor was not track but value in respect of the operation of the fixed costs regime.
He also noted that CPR 45.29J allowed the court to depart from the fixed costs regime if there were exceptional circumstances, while CPR 3.12(c) “clearly contemplates costs on the multi-track being subject to fixed costs”.
HHJ David Grant in Birmingham gave the claimants permission to appeal but then rejected their case. He said: “I reject Mr Skeate’s key submission [for the claimants] that ‘there is no room whatever for doubt that the fixed recoverable costs scheme was implemented only in relation to the fast-track’.
“To the contrary: the effect of inserting section IIIA into part 45 was to implement a fixed recoverable costs scheme in low-value personal injury claims arising out of a road traffic accident, which start under the RTA protocol but no longer continue under that protocol or the stage 3 procedure, but instead now proceed on the multi-track.”
Despite the allegation of fraud, HHJ Grant ruled that it was still a low-value claim. He observed that it was “discernibly of a different nature from the types of allegation often made in cases of commercial fraud in proceedings in the Chancery Division, the Commercial Court or the TCC”.
He explained: “The central factual issue in the present case is simply whether the first claimant applied the brakes in such a manner that he induced a relatively minor road traffic accident to occur.
“While the claimants’ overall probity will no doubt be explored at trial, perhaps involving consideration of their conduct before the accident, at the accident and indeed after the accident, and it may be necessary to consider some documents (such as relevant medical records), the overall nature of the case to my mind still answers the description of a low-value personal injury claim arising out of a road traffic accident, albeit proceeding on the multi-track.
“It does not, therefore, appear that the nature of the underlying proceedings is such that the implementation of fixed recoverable costs for such a claim would – of itself – cause affront to the overriding objective.”