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PI Brief Update

Paying the (Full) Price? Underpaid Fees and Limitation Periods - Simon Murray, 1 Chancery Lane

12/05/16. If you pay less than the appropriate fee when issuing your claim before the expiry of the limitation period is your claim in time? Or do you pay the price by being statute barred? On 7 April 2016 Warby J. sitting in the QBD was asked to determine a summary judgment/strike out application in case called in Bhatti v Asghar which raised this issue.

The claimants in this breach of contract case had underpaid the relevant court fees on issue.

The defendants applied for summary judgment /to strike out of the claimants’ claim, as they said the failure to pay the correct court fees meant the proceedings were invalid and given the expiry of the limitation period, no valid claim had been brought in time.

Warby J did not allow the strike out application, which on its face seems logically to follow from the underpayment. The reasoning is seemingly a cautionary tale.

As a matter of law an action was only "brought" for the purposes of the Limitation Act 1980 where a claimant had done all it could to set the claim in motion, including paying the court fees, per Page v Hewetts Solicitors [2012] EWCA Civ 805, [2012] C.P. Rep. 40 and Lewis v Ward Hadaway [2015] EWHC 3503 (Ch), [2016] 4 W.L.R. 6...

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The opinions expressed in the articles are the authors' own, not those of Law Brief Publishing Ltd, and are not necessarily commensurate with general legal or medico-legal expert consensus of opinion and/or literature. Any medical content is not exhaustive but at a level for the non-medical reader to understand. 

Professional advice should always be obtained before applying any information to particular circumstances.

Excerpts from judgments and statutes are Crown copyright. Any Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland under the Open Government Licence.