The Weekly Roundup: The Meatloaf Edition

• Published date: 25 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Insurance, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Insurance Laws and Products, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Personal Injury
• Law Firm: 1 Chancery Lane
• Author: Ms Sarah Prager and Tom Collins

It was a sad week this week for the team; not only did we learn of Meatloaf's death, which left us reeling, but of the Court of Appeal's heartless approach to the human rights of insurers. We've been following the progress of the insurer in Aviva Insurance Limited v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2021] 1 WLUK 101, in which it was argued that requiring employers' liability insurers to repay, under the Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Act 1997, certain social security benefits irrespective of any contributory negligence by the person with an injury or disease, or of the insured's partial responsibility, was incompatible with the insurers' rights under Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Alas! The Court of Appeal did not agree. Dingemans LJ commented:

'It is accurate to state that insurers will, in certain cases, pay the whole of the CRU certificate when their insured was responsible only for some of the wrongful exposure, see for example the position in Carder v University of Exeter where the former employer was responsible only for 2.3 per cent of the claimant's total exposure. However this is against a background where the tortfeasor is responsible in law, at least in part, for the accident, injury or disease which has led to the payment of the state benefits'

A case of Read Em and Weep for insurers?

Objects in the Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer than they Really are: Amending Claim Forms after the Expiry of the Limitation Period

In the recent decision in Cameron Taylor Consulting Ltd v BDW Trading Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 31, the Court of Appeal provided guidance on the correct approach to an application by a claimant to amend their claim form following the possible expiry of a limitation period.

The facts

The claim was brought by BDW Trading Ltd, part of the Barrett Group, against a number of engineering firms, in relation to a structural problem discovered in a residential tower block in Croydon. The problem had been discovered in 2019 and as a result, BDW began investigating earlier developments with which the defendants had been involved.

On 9^th April 2020 BDW served a re-amended claim form on the defendants, having added further claims and a further defendant to the original claim form. The defendants applied to disallow the amendments and re-amendments on various bases, including under CPR Part 17.4 on the grounds that the proposed new claims were statute barred. The limitation period in question was that under section 14B of the Limitation Act 1980 - which provides a longstop period of 15 years for a claim in negligence other than one involving...