Balancing Exercise on Interest Award

Adcock v Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd (CA TLR 26 April)

In exercising its discretionary power to award interest on damages, although a court might diminish the rate or period where a claimant had been guilty of gross delay, it should not forget that where a defendant was actually holding on to sums which he ought to have paid to the claimant, it was unlikely that the defendant would have been pressing on with the action himself. Although it could be argued that the judge in disallowing interest on damages for three years of the period claimed had misdirected himself by concentrating on delay, rather than on both delay and the date by which the defendants ought to have paid, he clearly had not formed a favourable view of the way the claimant had conducted his claim and the court would not interfere with what was ultimately a matter of discretion.