Civil Contempt - Committal - Claimant being responsible for motor accident involving defendants' car

Lane v Shah: Queen's Bench Division, Divisional Court (Lords Justice Laws and Simon (judgment delivered extempore)): 5 October 2011

The first and second defendant were husband and wife, the third defendant was their daughter. The first defendant was the passenger in a car driven by the second defendant, which was stationary when the first claimant's vehicle collided with the rear of the defendants' vehicle. The first claimant admitted liability. The first defendant, an accountant by trade, issued proceedings for personal injury.

The claim for damages was made on a deceitful calculation and several statements of truth for the purpose of the personal injury action were deceitfully signed by all three defendants in order to falsely inflate the damages claim. The first claimant's insurers, the second claimant, upon investigation found that the claims were false. When confronted the defendants admitted the deceit. CPR 32.14, so far as material, provided that: '(1) Proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against a person if he makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth. (2) Proceedings under this rule may be brought only ... (b) with the permission of the court. When applying for permission to bring contempt of court proceedings, the applicant has the burden of proving contempt to a criminal standard.'

The claimants applied for the committal of the three defendants for contempt of court. All three defendants were of previous good character. It was common ground the only issue before the court was the length and severity of sentence. The defendants submitted that if the court were minded to impose a custodial sentence it ought to be suspended bearing in mind several factors of mitigation namely, that a length of time had elapsed since the contempt had taken place, that it had been over a year since they had admitted the contempt, that none of the defendants had any previous convictions, that all had felt remorse and accepted responsibility for their actions and finally that all three defendants were in employment and the first and second defendants had a dependant son.

The court ruled: Those who make such false claims if caught should expect to go to prison. There was no other way to underline the gravity of the conduct. There was no other way to deter those who might be tempted to make such claims, and there was no other way to improve the administration of justice. The public and advisors had to be aware that, however easy it was to make false claims, either in relation to liability or in relation to compensation, if found out the consequences for those tempted to do so would be disastrous. They were almost inevitably in the future going to lead to sentences of imprisonment, which would have the knock‑on effect that the lives of those tempted to behave in that way, of both themselves and their families, were likely to be ruined.

In the instant case, the administration of justice required a prison sentence and there was no question of a suspended sentence. The first claimant would get six months' imprisonment, the second and third claimants would get three months' imprisonment each. South Wales Fire and Rescue Service v Smith [2011] EWHC 1749 (Admin) applied; Nield v Loveday [2011] All ER (D) 139 (Jul) applied.

Marcus Grant (instructed by Irwin Mitchell) for the claimants. Adam Swirsky (instructed by Gopal Gupta) for the defendants.