Wheeldon Brothers v Millenium Insurance: Property Insurance Policy Coverage

[2018] EWCA Civ 2403

Court of Appeal refuses permission to appeal a decision regarding coverage under a property insurance policy

Insurers appealed from the first instance decision that the insured was entitled to an indemnity under its property insurance policy following a fire at its waste processing plant.

The Court of Appeal noted that "Complaints about factual findings and expert evaluation...are surprisingly commonplace" and it therefore re-stated the following general principles: (1) To be overturned on appeal, a finding of fact must be one that no reasonable judge could have reached. In practice, that will usually occur only where there was no evidence at all to support the finding that was made, or the judge plainly misunderstood the evidence in order to arrive at the disputed finding; (2) A first instance judge's assessment of, or evaluations based upon, expert evidence adduced at trial must be approached by an appellate court with similar caution; and (3) because a judgment in the TCC is likely to involve detailed findings of fact in an area of specialist expertise, obtaining permission to appeal on such matters in a TCC case may be harder than in other, non-specialist types of case.

The Court of Appeal found that the appellant in this case had failed to surmount the high hurdle required to convince it to give permission to appeal. Most of the issues raised were factual and the judge had been entitled to reached the conclusions which he had.

One of the points considered by the Court of...