Ted Baker Plc & Anor v Axa Insurance UK Plc & Ors
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE MOORE-BICK
- LORD JUSTICE TOMLINSON
Areas of Law
- Insurance Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Appellant insurers sought to appeal a Commercial Court judgment favoring Ted Baker over contested insurance coverage from 2004-2009 for losses due to employee theft. The judge ruled the policies covered business interruption losses from clandestine employee theft and dismissed estoppel and rectification claims. The court denied the appeal permission.
Judgment on Costs
Mr Justice Eder:
This Judgment deals with the question of costs in these proceedings.
I have now delivered three main Judgments in this case. The first (“Part 1”) concerned a number of preliminary issues in relation to liability: see [2012] EWHC 1406 (Comm) . In summary I held that the relevant insurance policies covered “employee theft”. Further, I held that the claimants were not estopped by convention from relying on such construction. I also rejected the claims advanced on behalf of the various defendants for rectification and damages and, so far as the second and third defendants were concerned, also rejected their claims that they were entitled to avoid the contracts of insurance on grounds of misrepresentation and/or non-disclosure. (A late application for permission to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal: see [2014] EWCA Civ 134 .)
Following that Judgment, I delivered my second Judgment which dealt, in particular, with the question of costs: see [2012] EWHC 1779 (Comm) . The result of such second Judgment is summarised in paragraph 4 of my Order dated 29 June 2012:
“ 4. The costs of the above issues shall be reserved for final determination until after the case has been decided or further order save that it is hereby declared that subject to any offers of settlement that might have been made (whether pursuant to ” CPR Part 36 or otherwise) (i) the defendants shall pay to the claimants the costs of the preliminary issues to be assessed in detail if not agreed less the sum of £20,000 in respect of disclosure and (ii) the claimants shall pay to the defendants the costs in respect of the co-insurance issues on an indemnity basis to be assessed in detail if not agreed.
More recently, I delivered my third main Judgment (“Part 2”) dealing with further issues concerning claims co-operation and also quantum: see [2014] EWHC 3548 (Comm) .
In paragraph 32 of that last Judgment, I noted that the costs in the case had spiralled both in absolute terms and out of all proportion to the amount which was then in dispute. As there stated, although the claim had reduced, until at least shortly before the trial of Part 2, to some £904,000, I was told that up to 16 June 2014 excluding the costs of the appeal and ignoring the costs of that trial, after that date, the claimants’ costs were some £2.53m and the defendants’ costs some £1.8m. On that basis, I said that together with the costs of that trial, I would guess that the total c