Thursday 21 April 2011

Exaggerated claims

The Supreme Court has granted leave in the case of Summer which will be heard in january next year.
The Court of Appeal decided nearly 2 years ago in Shah that one cannot deny damages to a claimant who has exaggerated a claim or ,as in Shah, conspired with another so as to enable that person to pursue a false claim.
Professor Zuckerman wrote a compelling article recently suggesting that this misconduct could properly be categorised as an abuse of process enabling the entire claim to be struck out under CPR 3.4.
The one problem is how to gauge the degree of exaggeration .Should a claimant who claims £100 dishonestly lose their true £10,000 of quantum?