Jones v Chichester Harbour Conservancy & Ors

For the purpose of deciding whether a claim form was served within its period of validity, the question is whether the claimant completed the step required by CPR rule 7.5 within the applicable period. This remains so where the period has been extended by court order. The deemed date under CPR rule 6.14 does not create a further period during which service must be completed, nor does it invalidate service where the rule 7.5 step was taken in time. Rule 6.14 instead determines the date to be used for consequential procedural steps, such as calculating the time for acknowledging service or serving a defence. An order extending time for service should be interpreted in its procedural context. Where the application was made to extend compliance with rule 7.5, an order extending the time for service may properly be construed as extending time for taking the required rule 7.5 step.

The claimant, who had suffered paraplegia after falling from an oak tree, brought a claim against three defendants. The claim form was issued on 1 July 2016. An order extended the date for service to 17 January 2017. On that date the claim form was posted and also sent by email, although the defendants had not indicated willingness to accept email service. The hard copy arrived on 18 January.

The defendants applied for declarations that service was invalid and that the court lacked jurisdiction. The central issues were whether the relevant step under CPR rule 7.5 had to be completed by 17 January, or earlier so that the deemed date under rule 6.14 fell on or before that date, and how the extension order should be interpreted.

1. Service within validity. The claim form was validly served during the period of its validity. The relevant question under CPR rule 7.5 was whether the claimant completed the step required for the chosen method of service within the applicable period. The same approach applies to an ordinary four- or six-month validity period and to a period extended by court order.
2. Relationship between rules 7.5 and 6.14. CPR rule 7.5 is a special provision defining what must be done for service of a claim form within its period of validity. The deemed date under rule 6.14 does not displace that rule or create a dead period at the end of the claim form’s validity. Rule 6.14 has a meaningful consequential function: it fixes the date used for calculating later procedural time limits, including the time for acknowledging service or serving a defence.
3. Purposive construction. The 2008 amendments introduced the requirement to complete the relevant step before expiry of the claim form. Reading rule 6.14 as making service invalid whenever its deemed date fell after expiry would reintroduce the difficulty that the amendments were intended to remove. The rules, their headings, the CPR glossary and the purpose identified in the White Book supported the claimant’s construction.
4. Authorities. Brightside Group Ltd v RSM UK Audit LLP [2017] EWHC 6 (Comm) was of limited assistance because it concerned CPR rule 7.7, and observations going beyond that issue were strictly obiter. Properly understood, however, it supported the distinction between rule 7.5 validity and the operation of rule 6.14 for other purposes. T&L Sugars v Tate and Lyle Industries Ltd [2014] EWHC 1066 (Comm) was consistent with that construction and assisted the claimant.
5. Extension order. Although the order referred to extending the time for “service”, its proper interpretation, in the context of the application made under CPR rule 7.6(1), was that it extended time for compliance with rule 7.5. The court accordingly declared that the claim form had been validly served.