| LIMITATION OF ACTION — Personal injuries — Claim for damages for sexual assault — Whether time running from date of knowledge of significance of injury — Limitation Act 1980, ss 2, 11, 14, 33
A v Hoare; X and another v Wandsworth London Borough Council; C v Middlesborough Council; H v Suffolk County Council; Young v Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) [2008] UKHL 6; [2008] WLR (D) 20
HL: Lord Hoffmann, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Carswell and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood: 30 January 2008
A claim for damages for personal injuries caused by a sexual assault fell within s 11 of the Limitation Act 1980, allowing a limitation period of three years from the date when the claimant first considered the injury sufficiently serious to justify proceedings and the possibility of an extension beyond that if it was equitable to do so.
The House of Lords so held in allowing appeals by five claimants against three Court of Appeal decisions that their claims were outside s 11 and time-barred: (1) by A, H, X and Y [2006] 1 WLR 2320; (2) by C [2005] 1 FCR 76; and (3) by Kevin Raymond Young [2007] QB 932.
By 2 of the 1980 Act the limitation period for tort is six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued. By 1 of the Limitation Act 1975, now s 11 of the 1980 Act, the period for actions for “negligence, nuisance or breach of duty” in respect of personal injuries was three years from accrual or from the claimant's date of knowledge that his injury was significant, defined in s 14(2) of the 1980 Act as when he would reasonably have considered his injury sufficiently serious to justify instituting proceedings. S 33 of the 1980 Act gave the court a discretion, where a claim would otherwise fail under s 11, to extend the period if equitable to do so.
A, X, Y, C and H each sought to rely on s 11 or s 33 but the judges were bound by the decision in Stubbings v Webb [1993] AC 498 that s 11 did not apply to acts of indecent assault. The Young case turned on whether his post-traumatic stress disorder was to be taken into account in determining whether he had acted reasonably within s 14(2).
LORD HOFFMANN said that when Parliament had passed s 1 of the 1975 Act, now s 11 of the 1980 Act, it had done so in the knowledge that the term “negligence, nuisance or breach of duty” had been construed by the courts as applying to claims for intentional injuries and it must have intended the words to bear that same meaning. S 11 therefore extended to claims for damages arising from sexual assaults. Stubbings v Webb would be overruled. In applying s 14(2) the correct test was to ascertain what the claimant knew about the injury he had suffered, add any knowledge about the injury which was to be imputed to him under s 14(3) of the Act, and then ask whether a reasonable person with that knowledge would have considered the injury sufficiently serious to justify instituting proceedings. Any question as to the effect of psychological factors on his ability to institute proceedings was a matter for consideration under s 33.
LORD WALKER, LORD CARSWELL and LORD BROWN agreed. LADY HALE agreed on the Stubbings v Webb issue and concurred in the result in the Young case.
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Appearances: {Alan Newman QC and Paul Spencer (DLA Piper UK LLP, Leeds) for A; Elizabeth-Anne Gumbel QC and Henry Witcomb (Bolt Burdon Kemp, Islington) for X andY; Gumbel QC and Witcomb (Farrington Webb, Brighton) for C; Nigel Cooksley QC and Stephen Field (BTMK LLP, Southend-on-Sea) for H; Christopher Sharp QC and Andrew McLaughlin (Atkins Law, Exeter) for Hoare; Kate Thirlwall QC and Steven Ford (Browne Jacobson LLP, Nottingham) for Wandsworth and Suffolk; Thirlwall QC and Ford (Crutes, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) for Middlesborough; Stuart Brown QC and Rosalind Coe QC (Sharpe Pritchard for Jordans, Wakefield) for Mr Young; Edward Faulks QC and Nicholas Fewtrell (Hill Dickinson LLP, Liverpool) for Catholic Care; Nigel Wilkinson QC and Malcolm Sheehan (Treasury Solicitor) for the Home Office.
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