Annison v Nolan

On an appeal from a damages assessment, the appellate court may intervene under Part 52 of the Civil Procedure Rules where a serious procedural or other irregularity at trial has made the decision unjust. A judge who neither rules on the admissibility and relevance of material expert evidence nor addresses it in the judgment cannot leave the affected claim unexplained; a retrial may be required. A claimant seeking future costs must provide sufficiently reliable evidence of the amount claimed. Where hard data is absent, a notional assessment is not shown to be wrong merely because it is low.

Mr Annison, injured in a road traffic accident for which Mr Nolan admitted liability, appealed against a county court assessment of future special damages. The disputed heads were taxi costs for longer journeys and enhanced home maintenance and repair costs. Permission was limited to those grounds. The appeal also involved an application to adduce fresh evidence on taxi fares. The central questions were whether the assessment was wrong and whether the treatment of expert evidence on home maintenance involved a procedural irregularity making the decision unjust.

Lord Justice Mummery delivered the judgment, with which Lord Justices Richards and Rimer agreed.

1. Fresh evidence. The application to adduce evidence estimating future taxi fares was refused. The evidence could have been obtained for trial by reasonable efforts, and no satisfactory explanation was given for its absence. It would not have been just to admit it on appeal.
2. Taxi costs. The trial judge had accepted that Mr Annison would reasonably need taxis for longer journeys and had assessed the claim using a notional annual figure of £300 and a multiplier of 6.73. The absence of hard evidence about taxi fares meant that the judge had to work on a notional basis. The assessment was not shown to be wrong, so the appeal on this head was dismissed.
3. Home maintenance and repairs. The claims under Items 12 and 13 involved some overlap. Mr Ball had been appointed as a joint expert architect to report on adaptations, but his report also dealt with maintenance and repair costs outside the scope of his appointment. Relevance and admissibility were challenged. The judge neither ruled on those issues nor adequately addressed the report, the larger calculation contained in it, or the reasons for rejecting the claim beyond the admitted sum.
4. Appellate remedy. That failure constituted a serious procedural or other irregularity in the trial which made the decision on Items 12 and 13 unjust under Part 52 of the Civil Procedure Rules. The appeal was allowed on the home maintenance and repair head. That head was remitted for retrial before a different judge, with both parties at liberty to call fresh expert evidence.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — [2012] EWCA Civ 54: appeal allowed on the home maintenance and repair costs head and remitted for retrial before a different judge; appeal dismissed on future taxi costs.
• Chelmsford County Court — HHJ Murfitt’s order dated 8 December 2010, following judgment handed down on 29 November 2010: substantial damages were awarded, including assessments for future taxi costs and future DIY, gardening, utility and related claims.