The Court of Appeal handed down its decision in the joined appeals of Islington v Bourous (2022) and Davis v Yousaf (2022).

Both claims involved taxi drivers injured in road traffic accidents and suffering whiplash-type injuries. Both were placed in credit hire vehicles and submitted their claims through the Ministry Of Justice (MOJ) portal.

In the Bourous claim, the other side argued that the claimant should be limited to loss of profits at the Stage 3 court hearing, having not raised this at Stage 2 - the offer submission stage.

The claim was dismissed at the first hearing and this decision overturned at appeal.

In Yousaf, the claimant had provided a witness statement which set out an assertion of his impecuniosity but no financial documents to back this up. The Defendant put him to proof at Stage 2 and requested financial disclosure.

On appeal, it was held that the plea of impecuniosity in the witness statement was sufficient. Both claims were appealed and both appeals dismissed.

In Bourous the court felt that the defendant should have raised their arguments at Stage 2 and in both claims, the court held that if the defendant had wanted to challenge the adequacy of the evidence, they should have applied to have the claim transferred to Part 7.

The submission that the court ought to have transferred the claim to Part 7 of its own motion was not a permissible ground of appeal.

The court commented that the Road Traffic Accident Protocol is a process designed to deal with large volumes of low value claims quickly, at proportionate cost and with limited court resources.

The court of appeal further stated that the commentary from Phillips v Willis (2016) in the White Book which states that only ‘rare and exceptional cases’ should be dropped from Part 8, is not accurate.