CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

A combined Part 36 offer containing a lump sum and periodical payments is assessed by the figures stated in the offer. The periodical payments figure is not capitalised by applying a multiplier. The claimant must beat both components before the offer is beaten. Separate offers may produce different consequences.

For a leapfrog appeal, the trial judge must first determine whether the statutory conditions are met and whether the case would properly merit permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal. The judge must then decide whether a sufficient case exists for a direct appeal to the Supreme Court. Where a Court of Appeal decision creates a serious unresolved conflict with House of Lords authority, the issue may be one of general public importance. In this case, those conditions were satisfied.

The claimant, an eight-year-old child with cerebral palsy, brought a negligence claim against the defendant hospital trust. Liability had been admitted. The court assessed damages at a lump sum of £6,866,615 and lifetime periodical payments of £394,940 per year.

The claimant had made a combined Part 36 offer of £7 million and periodical payments of £360,000 per year. She beat the periodical payments element but not the lump sum element. The court had to decide whether the offer was beaten and whether to certify a leapfrog appeal concerning the availability of lost-years damages to a severely disabled child.

1. Part 36. A combined offer under Part 36 has two separate monetary components: the lump sum and the periodical payments figure. The money-terms value of each component is the figure stated in the offer. Capitalising periodical payments by an agreed or awarded multiplier would undermine the purpose of periodical payments, which is to avoid reliance on uncertain life-expectancy assumptions.
2. The claimant’s combined offer was a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the whole claim. She beat the periodical payments figure but failed to beat the lump sum figure. The combined offer was therefore not beaten. The Part 36 rewards did not arise, and the claimant was awarded costs on the standard basis.
3. Leapfrog appeal. The application involved a two-stage test. First, the statutory conditions had to be satisfied, including a point of law of general public importance and the relevant statutory basis for direct appeal. The judge also had to be satisfied that, absent a certificate, the case would be a proper one for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.
4. Second, the judge had to decide whether a sufficient case had been made out. In this context, the inquiry was whether there was any reason in justice or public policy to refuse a leapfrog appeal. The question whether a severely disabled child may recover lost-years damages had a realistic prospect of success, involved an unresolved conflict between Pickett and Gammell on the one hand and Croke on the other, and was a point of general public importance. The Court of Appeal had identified the conflict but considered itself bound by Croke.
5. The judge certified the issue as fit to justify an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court and granted conditional leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal if Supreme Court leave was refused.

This was a first-instance consequentials decision in the High Court. The judgment records earlier Court of Appeal consideration in Croke v Wiseman and Iqbal v Whipps Cross University NHS Trust, but no appeal from the present decision had yet occurred.