Hall & Anor v Motor Sport Vision Ltd & Ors

On an interlocutory appeal concerning refusal of permission to amend, the Court of Appeal should interfere only where the first-instance decision was plainly wrong. A judge may refuse a late amendment which introduces a substantially different case, causes disproportionate cost and delay, and concerns matters the applicant knew or should reasonably have investigated earlier. The discretion must be exercised consistently with the overriding objective in Part I of the Civil Procedure Rules.

The claimants contracted for participation in a motor-racing championship and alleged that the defendant had supplied unsafe or unfit cars. On the first day of trial before His Honour Judge Bullimore in the Technology and Construction Court, they sought permission to re-re-re-amend their statement of case and adduce new evidence concerning systemic safety failures, including the absence of crack testing, lifeing and records.

The judge refused the application, principally because the proposed case was raised too late and the claimants had been alerted earlier to matters requiring investigation. Permission to appeal was initially refused but later granted. The central issue was whether the judge’s exercise of discretion was plainly wrong.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the refusal of permission to amend. The appellants were ordered to pay the respondents’ appeal costs, with £10,000 payable on account, and the money paid into court was directed to be released to the respondents’ solicitors.
2. Lord Justice Buxton applied the established approach that an appellate court should not interfere with an interlocutory discretionary decision unless satisfied that it was plainly wrong. He referred to Croft v Jewell [1993] PIQR at 273 and Tanfern v Cameron-McDonald [2000] 1 WLR 1311.
3. The proposed amendments introduced a materially different case from the pleaded complaints about individual mechanical defects. They would have required a substantially longer trial and expert evidence. The judge was entitled to regard the claimants’ delay as culpable: their experience, the absence of winter preparation records, and earlier incidents involving defective components should have prompted investigation into wider safety practices.
4. The existence of disputed evidence about industry practice did not make the judge’s conclusion plainly wrong. Nor did the defendants’ failure to disclose records prevent the claimants from raising a broader case earlier. The relevant criticism was that they had taken no adequate step to investigate or plead that case.
5. Mr Justice Jackson agreed that the amendments represented a dramatic departure from the existing case, would cause disproportionate expense and delay, and were inconsistent with the overriding objective in Part I of the Civil Procedure Rules.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) [2002] EWCA Civ 702: appeal dismissed and the refusal of permission to re-re-amend upheld.
• Technology and Construction Court, Sheffield District Registry: His Honour Judge Bullimore refused permission on the first day of trial to amend the statement of case and adduce new evidence.