Angela Denise Curtiss & Ors. v Zurich Insurance Plc & Anor.

Applications for sanctions under Practice Direction 57AC must be approached with common sense and proportionality. The Practice Direction is intended to confine trial witness statements to relevant factual evidence within the witness’s knowledge. It is not an invitation to conduct line-by-line satellite litigation or to use objections as weapons. Depending on the seriousness of the breach, the court may strike out material, order redrafting, require oral evidence, impose costs sanctions, or leave the issue to cross-examination and submissions at trial. Trivial non-compliance may be ignored. An inference-based witness statement is not necessarily non-compliant where the evidential basis and reasoning process are clearly identified.

The claimants, owners of leases in the Meridian Quay development, brought claims against Zurich Insurance Plc and East West Insurance Company Limited concerning alleged misrepresentations in insurance cover notes. Before trial, Zurich applied under Practice Direction 57AC to strike out four witness statements in full and parts of other statements. The application concerned evidence from licensed conveyancers, lenders, the developer’s solicitor, repeated stock phrases, and Zurich’s surveyor. The central questions were whether the evidence complied with the Practice Direction and, if not, what proportionate sanction should follow.

1. Disposition. The application was granted in part. The court struck out the statements of Miss Sanders and Ms Hutchison, the statements of Mr Elson and Mr Ford, and specified passages in Mr Davies’s statement. It permitted Mr Sanders to serve a replacement statement within a fortnight. No action was taken regarding stock phrases or Mr Dummer’s statement.
2. Applicable approach. Practice Direction 57AC requires trial witness statements to contain relevant factual evidence within the witness’s personal knowledge, expressed in the witness’s own words where practicable. Its purpose is to prevent statements becoming vehicles for narrative, commentary, argument, opinion, or document recital. It does not alter the law of admissibility.
3. Proportionality. A party responding to an alleged breach must exercise common sense and consider the seriousness of the breach and proportionality. Sanctions applications must not become litigation weapons or encourage fine-tooth-comb analysis and trench warfare. Some matters may be dealt with by cross-examination or submissions at trial; others may require advance determination. The guidance in Lifestyle Equities CV v Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club Ltd does not create a rigid rule that applications are justified only for substantial breaches.
4. Witnesses without relevant personal knowledge. The licensed conveyancers and lenders were not involved in the transactions and could not give evidence of the relevant primary facts or the subjective understanding of those involved. Their statements were therefore irrelevant or positively unhelpful. The developer’s solicitor’s commentary, opinion and argument were similarly struck out, while limited factual or contextual material was retained.
5. Stock phrases and inference. Repeated wording across statements was unsatisfactory and arguably undermined their authenticity, but could be addressed through cross-examination or oral evidence in chief. Mr Dummer’s inference-based evidence was not shown to breach the Practice Direction because it identified the materials relied upon and the inferential process. Its weight and reliability could instead be tested at trial.

not stated in the judgment.