Crestline Direct Finance LP v Insurance Company Euroins AD

Summary judgment may be granted on a short point of law or construction where the court has the necessary evidence and no realistic prospect exists that a fuller trial will affect the outcome. The court must avoid a mini-trial and consider evidence reasonably expected to be available at trial. Strike out is inappropriate where a pleaded defence raises coherent factual or interpretative issues which could affect liability. An assignee must establish the rights obtained by the assignment relied upon. Uncertainty about an earlier assignment, supported by identified documentary gaps rather than mere speculation, may prevent summary disposal.

Crestline claimed £3,690,296 under a guarantee bond issued by Euroins in connection with a building contract. Crestline applied to strike out Euroins’s Defence, alternatively for summary judgment on liability, with quantum to be assessed separately. Euroins relied on several defences, including uncertainty about the validity and effect of Crestline’s assignment and issues concerning termination, insolvency and contractual accounting provisions. The central issue was whether the claim and defences could properly be determined without a trial.

1. Applications dismissed. Crestline had not established that Euroins had no real prospect of successfully defending the claim. The evidential uncertainty concerning the history, nature and effect of any earlier assignment was a real issue, not hopeful speculation. Crestline’s refusal to provide requested assignment documentation was therefore fatal to the summary judgment application (paras [44]-[60]).
2. An assignee can assign only the rights it holds. The court could not determine what rights the Employer retained when the later assignment of 28 May 2024 was executed, or whether an earlier assignment had already transferred some or all of them (paras [49], [56]-[59]).
3. There was no proper basis for striking out the Defence. CPR rule 3.4 concerns statements of case disclosing no reasonable grounds for bringing or defending a claim. It is not a general mechanism for removing individual issues unless the Defence is thereby bound to fail. Paragraph 72 also depended on the other pleaded defences (paras [35]-[36], [61]-[65]).
4. The court declined to determine the remaining contractual issues. Defences concerning termination, repudiatory breach and the operation of the JCT insolvency accounting provisions raised factual and construction questions unsuitable for determination on these applications. Although