Stor RB One Ltd v Sripiragash Kanthasamy

A judgment obtained by fraud may ordinarily be set aside only against a party whose own fraud procured it. Fraud by another party or witness is insufficient unless it is attributable to the judgment creditor or the creditor adopted it. Adoption may arise where the parties’ positions are interdependent, but mere benefit from forged material innocently deployed is not enough. The creditor’s conscious dishonesty must relate to conduct that misleads the court. A claim may be struck out where the pleaded facts, even as amended, cannot satisfy these requirements.

Stor RB One Ltd obtained summary judgment against Mr Kanthasamy on a personal guarantee. Mr Kanthasamy sought to set aside that judgment, alleging that Mr Kandiah, a director of co-defendant Konnec Ltd, had forged the guarantee documents and that Stor had adopted the fraud by relying on them.

Stor applied to strike out the claim or obtain reverse summary judgment. The court had previously dismissed Stor’s reverse summary judgment application on the facts and adjourned the strike-out application pending the Court of Appeal’s decision in Lindsay’s Estate v Outlook Finance Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 1005. The central issue was whether a judgment could be set aside where the alleged fraud was committed by someone other than the judgment creditor.

1. The court held that the claim fell outside the fraud-of-a-party rule. The Court of Appeal’s summary in Lindsay’s Estate v Outlook Finance Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 1005 required the fraudulent evidence to be that of the party against whom the judgment was to be set aside. A witness’s fraud was insufficient unless the witness was vital to the party’s case and integral to its litigation team. In some circumstances, one party’s fraud could be treated as another’s where they adopted a common cause and the innocent party adopted the fraudulent evidence for its own benefit.

2. The court focused on whether Stor had adopted Mr Kandiah’s alleged fraud in a way that made it unjust for Stor to rely on the judgment. Mere benefit from the alleged fraud was insufficient. The adoption cases, including Cinpres Gas Injection Ltd v Melea Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 9 and Lindsay’s Estate, involved structural dependence: the innocent party’s case stood or fell with the fraudster’s position. Stor had not delegated the guarantee issue to Mr Kandiah, and the guarantee’s validity had been admitted. Its reliance on the document without a known allegation of forgery did not amount to adoption.

3. The claim also failed because the alleged dishonest conduct did not amount to a deceit on the court. The court accepted that the judgment creditor’s verified statement of case could be evidence at a non-trial hearing under Civil Procedure Rules 1998 rule 32.6(2). But the pleaded case was that Mr Kandiah forged the documents to deceive Stor in 2022, not that he acted with an intention to deceive the court in 2023. Stor’s innocent reliance could not be combined with Mr Kandiah’s alleged dishonest state of mind to meet the requirement for conscious and deliberate dishonesty in relation to the misleading act.

4. Stor’s application to strike out was granted, alternatively reverse summary judgment was granted, because the amended claim had no real prospects of success. The court allowed Mr Kanthasamy’s late amendment: although deliberate and unjustified, it had not delayed the application or caused uncompensated prejudice. The application to add Mr Kandiah and JMW Solicitors was refused. Costs consequential to the amendment application were reserved for submissions.

This was a first-instance decision on Stor’s adjourned strike-out application. The court had earlier dismissed Stor’s reverse summary judgment application on the facts in [2026] EWHC 1696 (Comm) and adjourned the strike-out issue pending the Court of Appeal’s decision in Lindsay’s Estate v Outlook Finance Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 1005 .