The Dekagram: 26th June 2023

• Published date: 28 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Corporate/Commercial Law, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Corporate and Company Law, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Personal Injury
• Law Firm: Deka Chambers
• Author: Giles Bedloe and Max Melsa

This week the team's been glued to the telly, and in particular SupremeCourtTV, following the progress of Griffiths v TUI as it wends towards its conclusion. Truth be told, we've been mildly surprised by the lack of fanfare around the hearing, given that the decision will affect all cases involving expert evidence, whether arising in a travel law context or not. This set us to musing on all the travel and cross border cases which have developed the law and procedure of England and Wales – and then another one came along. The decision in Abbott and others will be of importance to all practitioners working with groups of litigants; Max Melsa gives us the lowdown. Meanwhile, the corporate lawyers, in Blacklion, may have a thing or two to tell us about pleading points and – more generally – what the civil justice system is for: "Litigation's overriding object is to do justice between parties, and form should not override substance." Words which ought to be embossed on the Bench of every courtroom in the land.

All Aboard the Omnibus

The appeal in Abbott and others v Ministry of Defence [2023] EWHC 1475 (KB) concerned the claims of about 3,500 Claimants (for context, the average attendance at Fleetwood Town or Colchester United home games last season) and whether each of those Claimants required their own Claim Forms to be issued.

The Claimants were military personal who claim to have suffered noise induced hearing loss. There were key traits within each claim that were common between them. The parties had agreed that there should be trials for lead cases and common issues by the time the case came to Master Davison in July 2022. At that CMC however, the Master questioned whether separate Claim Forms needed to be issued for each Claimant, and in finding that this was the case, directed for each of the Claimants to issue their own Claim Forms within 6 months or be struck out.

In the appeal, the Court considered the wording of CPR 7.3:

A claimant may use a single claim form to start all claims which can be conveniently disposed of in the same proceedings.

In granting the appeal, three determinations were made:

1. It was not disputed by the parties that being "disposed of" means the claims finally determined, not just case managed [51];
2. The test of convenience is only that common disposal be convenient; it does not require common disposal to be the only possible or reasonable way of determining the set of claims in question, or that separate disposal would be...