Courts clarify approach where part of the claim was fundamentally dishonest

Published: 9th April 2018

The courts have clarified what approach should be taken where it finds that part of the claim was fundamentally dishonest

Under Section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, the Courts have been entitled to disallow the whole of a claim which would otherwise have been successful, where part of the damages claimed were found to be fundamentally dishonest.

In a High Court judgment delivered in early 2018, in the London organising committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games v Sinfield 2018, the trial judge found that the Claimant had dishonestly claimed that as a result of his injuries, he was unable to tend his garden and therefore he had to hire a gardener. Even though that part of the claim was only 28% of his total damages, the trial judge found that it would be substantially unjust to dismiss the entire claim, given that the dishonest part of it was only a small part and the remainder was honest and genuine.

The judge, on appeal, found that the default position is that a fundamentally dishonest Claimant should lose his damages in their entirety.