The High Court has blocked a firm’s latest attempt to issue multiple different claims through the same claim form.

Master Davison ruled in Abbott & Ors v Ministry of Defence that claimant firm Hugh James was not permitted to join multiple claimants with widely differing military noise deafness cases to one claim form.

He said that allowing it to proceed as one cohort of claims would generate multiple tracks and trials and place an ‘impossible strain’ on the court’s case management system.

The court heard that this was the third time Hugh James had tried such a tactic, with both previous attempts having been rebuffed during the case management phase.

In a first cohort of deafness claims, consisting of roughly 250 cases, the court ordered that they be stayed in favour of negotiated dispute resolution.

In 2019, Senior Master Fontaine had ruled on a group of five claims for non-freezing cold injury that it was not permissible to handle them through one claim form.

This was because the claims had very little in common other than the fact that they were all for the same type of injury and all against the Ministry of Defence.

Now, faced with a further ‘omnibus’ claim form but this time for 3,500 claims, Master Davison said there were the same obstacles.

He accepted that the rules allow multiple claimants to be joined as parties to a claim but pointed out that they also state that a claimant may only use a single claim form when claims can be conveniently disposed of in the same proceedings.

The master added: ‘The 3,500 claims joined in these proceedings plainly cannot be conveniently disposed of in the same proceedings. Indeed, it seems to me that the contrary is not seriously arguable.

‘The claims are far, far too disparate in terms of the periods and circumstances in which each claimant sustained his or her NIHL. They have a common defendant and a number of common themes. But that is all.’

The MoD submitted that the handling of these claims was analogous to the procedures adopted under a group litigation order, but that a GLO would require a court fee for every claim, which had not been paid in this case. It was also pointed out that 100 other cases run by different solicitors had been issued through individual claim forms and with the relevant court fee paid.

The master directed that unless individual claim forms are issued within six months, the claims will be struck out. He told Hugh James to address the question of the court fees (which all litigants who do not qualify for fee remission must pay) and review all of the 3,500 claims to assess which are, in reality, to be taken forward. An application for permission to appeal was refused.

 

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