In personal injury claims, there is a three year time limit (in the vast majority, but not all, cases) to start a claim, writes Irwin Mitchell’s David Withers.
If an injured person fails to start Court Proceedings within the three year period and there are no exceptions that apply, they run the risk of the Court finding that their claim has become “statute barred”.
In other words, the Defendant would have a complete defence, even if the breach of duty (fault) had been obvious.
Under the Limitation Act 1980, the Courts have the discretion to allow cases to proceed even if they are brought out of time.
This discretion is often used when injured people have not been able to issue Court Proceedings for a number of very valid reasons.
So, cases can proceed, even if they have been brought out of time, the Government is intending to change the law for our armed forces.
The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill would apply a finite deadline of six years for claims for death or injury of a member of the armed forces.
There would be no ability to extend this arbitrary period of time, regardless of how exceptional the circumstances were.
This would place the Ministry of Defence in a much more advantageous position than any other Defendant in the country.
Part 1 of Schedule 2 states:“The court shall not under this section dis-apply any provision of section 11 in its application to an overseas armed forces action if the action was brought after the expiration of the period of six years from the section 11 relevant date”.
There are a plethora of examples when the Ministry of Defence’s negligence may result in significant psychiatric injury to armed forces personnel meaning that there may be an understandable delay in individual exercising their civil rights.
The Government has indicated that the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill will be “providing greater legal protections to armed forces personnel and veterans serving on military operations overseas”; it is difficult to see how this is true.
As the proposed law stands to be, members of the Armed Forces and the Security Services, on the same operation, would have two different outcomes having been victims of the same negligent conduct.
David Withers is a partner and solicitor-advocate at Irwin Mitchell LLP, leading a team specialising in neuro-trauma and other serious injuries such as amputations or significant poly-trauma.
