Manna v Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

An appellate court will not disturb a fact-sensitive award for adapted accommodation where it falls within the trial judge’s generous ambit of reasonable decision-making. An additional home for a non-resident parent may be recoverable where it is required for the disabled claimant’s care and family life, but such an award creates no general precedent.

Where a party did not challenge a critical element of a conventional accommodation calculation at trial, it may be too late to raise it on appeal if doing so would reopen the financial model and require further evidence. Courts should be slow to impose costs sanctions for an allegedly unreasonable negotiating stance. The settlement-offer regime is intended to avoid that inquiry. Indemnity costs may nevertheless be justified by an exceptional and unsuccessful case at trial, including unfounded allegations that family carers dishonestly exaggerated the claimant’s needs.

The claimant sustained profound brain damage through negligent management of his birth. Liability had been compromised at 50%, and damages were assessed following an eight-day quantum trial before Cox J.

The High Court awarded damages for suitable principal accommodation and for an additional property in which the claimant could stay overnight with his father. It calculated the latter by the approach in [1989] 1 QB 878. The judge also ordered indemnity costs from 11 June 2015 after the defendant rejected the claimant’s non-Part 36 settlement offer.

The defendant appealed the additional-home award, the use of the claimant’s lifetime multiplier, and the indemnity-costs order. The central issues were whether the accommodation award was permissible and reasonable, whether the multiplier challenge could be raised on appeal, and whether the defendant’s conduct justified indemnity costs.

1. The appeal was dismissed. Tomlinson LJ, with whom Ryder LJ agreed, upheld the award for an additional home for the claimant’s father and the order for indemnity costs.

2. The judge had been entitled to award accommodation damages for the additional home. The claimant had a long history of shared care with his father. Both parents genuinely wished that arrangement to resume if suitable accommodation permitted overnight care. The trial judge found that restoring the relationship was in the claimant’s best interests. Although the award was generous and intensely fact-dependent, it fell within the ambit of reasonable decision-making. It was not a precedent for comparable recovery generally.

3. The court did not reconsider the pragmatic but imperfect accommodation-damages approach in [1989] 1 QB 878. The defendant had not challenged at trial the use of the claimant’s lifetime multiplier if the additional-home claim succeeded. A challenge raised after circulation of the draft judgment was too late. Allowing it would reopen the wider question of the appropriate financial structure, potentially require further evidence, and undermine the certainty needed for settlement of such claims.

4. The judge’s criticism of the defendant’s settlement conduct could not itself justify indemnity costs. Courts should be very slow to investigate whether parties negotiated reasonably, since that produces costly satellite litigation dependent on their respective knowledge. The Part 36 regime is designed to avoid that inquiry, particularly where late disclosure and evidence affected the parties’ positions.

5. However, the indemnity-costs order was sustainable on the separate ground concerning trial conduct. The defendant advanced an unsuccessful case that the claimant’s family had dishonestly exaggerated his care needs out of greed. Its care and occupational-therapy evidence was found unrealistic. The trial judge, who had heard the evidence and was experienced in such litigation, was entitled to conclude that the conduct fell outside the norm. The Court of Appeal would not interfere.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Dismissed the defendant’s appeal and upheld both the additional-accommodation award and the indemnity-costs order.

• High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division: Cox J assessed damages, including the additional-home award, in [2015] EWHC 2279 (QB).

• High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division: Cox J ordered the defendant to pay costs from 11 June 2015 on the indemnity basis in [2015] EWHC 3461 (QB).