Description
Judgment concerning entitlement to a Part 36 order, as set out in CPR 36.14(3), where the claimant was awarded damages greater than the claimant's Part 36 offer but ordered to pay the defendants' costs for an abandoned claim.
Held,
inter alia: Information 'available to the parties' referred to in CPR 36.14(4)(c) is the information relating to the merits of the claim and not information as to what costs the maker of the offer had incurred at the date of the offer.
Deficiencies in information available to the parties, such as a failure to give details of costs, will not automatically mean that a Part 36 order must not be made. Such an order will only not be made if the deficiencies are such that it would be unjust, which requires the court to examine the consequences of the alleged deficiencies and whether the party receiving the offer would have acted differently if the information had not been deficient.
In the present case, the claimant had beaten the valid offer and it was not unjust to make a Part 36 order where the alleged lack of information as to the claimant's costs had no causative effect on the defendants' refusal to accept the offer. To avoid an issue-based assessment and to set off costs due to the defendants, a 95 per cent reduction was justified.
(Judgment in main action, finding a breach of an accountant's duty to advise on tax matters, at
[2013] EWHC 1500 (QB))
