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	England and Wales High Court (Chancery Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Chancery Division) Decisions >> Grosvenor Property Developers v Portner Law Ltd [2025] EWHC 854 (Ch) (09 April 2025) URL: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2025/854.html Cite as: [2025] EWHC 854 (Ch)

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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
BUSINESS LIST(Ch D)

		Royal Courts of Justice, Rolls Building Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL
		9 April 2025

SAIRA SALIMI :

1. The application before me was made by the Claimant in this litigation to amend its Particulars of Claim. It was made and served on the Defendant on 27 March 2025. The application is opposed by the Defendant in the litigation. I refer to the parties in this short judgment as the Claimant and Defendant for the sake of simplicity.
2. It was common ground that I have a broad discretion under Part 17 of the CPR to permit a party to amend a statement of case. In exercising that discretion I must weigh up the potential injustice to each party caused by allowing or disallowing the amendments, bearing in mind at all times the overriding objective. I am grateful to counsel for both parties for their helpful submissions.

The Claimant's case

3. The Claimant argued that it was in the interests of justice to permit the amendments. They arose, it was argued, out of disclosure by the Defendants in July 2024, and could not have been made at an earlier date.
4. The Claimant argued that the prejudice to the Defendant in making consequential amendments within ten weeks of trial was small. Although it was conceded that the application was late, it was not so late that it would affect the timetable to trial. The amendments, it was said, were relatively brief (six pages) and did not alter the nature of the claim. They added further detail of the matters pleaded against the Defendant, and the amendments provided information to the Defendant as to the case to be put to him in cross-examination.
5. While it was acknowledged that they were late in making the application, the Claimant's legal team was small and had been dealing, in the latter part of last year, with an application for security for costs in these proceedings. The Claimant stressed that this was not a "very late" application within the meaning given by the case law, as it was not argued that it caused any jeopardy to the trial date. It was in the interests of justice for the case to be pleaded fully.
6. The Claimant also drew attention to the Defendant's refusal to date to engage in mediation of the dispute, notwithstanding the offer made in open correspondence on 17 October 2024 and 8 November 2024.
7. The Claimant also made a number of points concerning alleged failings in disclosure by the Defendants at an earlier stage of the proceedings, both before and after the issue of the claim. I have disregarded those points as irrelevant to the matter that was before me for decision.

The Defendant's objection

8. It is not suggested by the Defendant that the amended claim has no realistic prospect of success. It is also not suggested that it fundamentally changes the nature of the claim. The primary objection to the amendments is their lateness: the Claimants had all the material relied on by July 2024, when disclosure was complete. The Defendant submitted that there was no good reason for that delay: the Claimant's explanation that its legal team had been engaged on the response to the application for security for costs was not, it was submitted, an adequate excuse for the eight month delay in making the application.
9. The Defendant also drew my attention to the table annexed to the Claimant's skeleton, which demonstrated that although some of the material in question was not available to the Claimant at the time when the Particulars of Claim were filed, in October 2023, much of it had already been disclosed at that date and would therefore have been available for the purposes of preparing the Particulars of Claim.
10. Although the Defendant acknowledged that it would be possible to produce an amended Defence and take a further witness statement from Mr Broughton in the time available to trial, it was submitted that that constituted an unreasonable diversion from trial preparation in order to deal with amendments that should have been considered by the court at a much earlier stage. The nature of the work was different, even if the ground to be covered was similar, and it would take up the legal advisers' time unnecessarily.

Decision on permission

11. The application is, it is conceded, made late. The Claimant's explanation that a small legal team was taken up with other things, while understandable, does not constitute a complete excuse for the substantial delay in applying to amend these pleadings. It was conceded that some of the material relied on was available in pre-action disclosure and therefore could have been incorporated in the original Particulars of Claim, and that other material was provided, at the latest, by July 2024. There is therefore some force in the Defendant's argument that there has been unreasonable delay in making the application.
12. There is, however, also some force in the Claimant's argument that notwithstanding the delay the amendments should be permitted in the interests of fairness: the Claimant is endeavouring to recover assets for creditors following misappropriation of funds (whether or not the Defendant was complicit in that misappropriation).
13. In weighing up the injustice to be done to either side by granting or refusing permission to make these amendments, I find on balance that the interests of justice are best served by granting permission to the Claimant to make the amendments. Although of course the Defendant is correct that Mr Broughton is facing serious allegations, the claim as originally pleaded already includes allegations of dishonesty to which Mr Broughton would have had to respond. The amendments add specificity and detail to that allegation but do not fundamentally alter the nature of the pleaded case. The points relating to disclosed documents are matters that would have had to be dealt with in cross-examination at trial in any event. In my view, therefore, the Defendant has somewhat overstated the extent of the additional work generated as a result of the proposed amendments.
14. I have not taken into account the points raised by the Claimant in relation to disclosure and the earlier application for security for costs, as they do not seem to me to be points that are relevant to the application before me.
15. Permission is therefore granted to the Claimants to make the amendments in accordance with their application. Costs of the hearing on 8 April, and the costs of and arising from the amendments, will be determined following further written submissions from the parties.