Fraudulent claims

Fraud in the proceedings

Part 22 of the Civil Procedure Rules requires formal documents to be verified by a statement of truth. Failing this, a pleading can be struck out and evidence declared inadmissible. These familiar powers sit alongside the Part 32.14 warning that makers of known false statements are liable for contempt of court, as referred to both at CPR 22 PD.3.8(3) and 22 PD.5. Such is the background to Binks v Securicor Omega Express Ltd [2003] 1 WLR 2557. In view of the Court of Appeal’s broad interpretation of Part 22 in this case, defendants and their insurers are now at risk of liability at the suit of an untruthful claimant who may, to quote Pill LJ ‘succeed on the basis of a version of events which he has denied’. By this decision, which is remarkably at odds with Part 22 and its underlying philosophy, the Court of Appeal allowed the claimant to succeed with an unpleaded alternative case which was disallowed by the trial judge and in the event never tried at first instance: though it had been suggested as a possibility by part of the defendant’s evidence it was nevertheless flatly contrary to the claimant’s own evidence and pleaded case. The case and its implications are considered by Tim Stephenson, an Associate in Hill Taylor Dickinson’s Commodities and International Trade Group.