A free lunch

Yesterday was handed down judgment in the case of Katherine Ann Irving v Morgan Sindall [2018] EWHC 1147 (QB) one of the more significant credit hire cases of recent years.

The judgment (subject to any second appeal) explains why pleas of misrepresentation or collateral contract to impeach  by a defendant who has had a good run in cross examination of a claimant, simply put are irrelevant.

The earlier post I wrote on this topic can be found here: http://credithirebarrister.com/enforceability/illiterate-clients-free-cars-mistake-and-misrepresentation/: what is interesting about the Irving case in particular is that the High Court judge adopted a very simple and straightforward analysis of the position in law, uncluttered by legal exegesis from the misrepresentation/mistake cases, derived from the speech of Lord Mustill in Giles v Thompson [1994] 1 AC 142.

It remains to be seen whether the defendant will seek to case the further.

I am grateful to Mr Ben Williams QC for bringing the judgment to my attention.

2 thoughts on “A free lunch

  1. Hi Andrew
    A sensible decision based on the law for once!
    Do you think that this decision will have any effect on the increasing applications for CHOs to pay Ds costs when claimants fail
    It seems to reinforce the fact that the hire claim is the Claimants claim for LOU and implicitly therefore not for the benefit of the CHO and the fact that the Insurers delay in paying the V/D has greatly contributed to the cost of the hire would seem to suggest the cost has more to do with their incompetence rather than a claim brought for the benefit of the CHO

    1. Hello Tony. It’s an interesting resurrection of Lord Mustill’s speech, which has a lot of things to say on a lot of issues. The point was always dubious legally: based upon an often half baked appreciation of the law of misrepresentation. On the non party costs point, Lord Mustill again makes the point, that the claim is the Claimants for loss of use. The fact he buys in services to mitigate his loss, should be neither here nor there.

Leave a Reply to Tony Learmonth Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.