Honey the Hamster

The case of Von Cowan v. Foreman (as executor) and others FD18F00079 is a contentious estate action in which the wife of the deceased brought an action against her estate under the Inheritance (Family and Dependant Provisions) Act 1975. The estate was estimated at just under £16 million at the time of death. Under section 4 of the 1975 Act, a claim may be filed after the expiry of the period of 6 months from the date of grant of the succession only with the authorization of the court. In this case, the claim was issued almost 17 months after the expiry of the 6-month period, but part of those 17 months was the subject of a standstill agreement. The case has now been brought before the Court of Appeal, which granted leave to commence the proceedings late and made the following remarks in support of properly worded standstill agreements: – A standstill agreement may maintain the applicant`s position with respect to the limitation period by suspending or extending the time limit. If the standstill agreement results in a suspension of the duration, the applicant shall have the same period after the expiry of the standstill period to assert his claim as at the time of the contractual agreement. If the standstill agreement only extends the time limit, the plaintiff must bring an action after the status quo period has expired. Standstill agreements to extend or suspend a limitation period have become a regular part of civil proceedings. They allow the parties to focus on the requirements of the pre-action protocol without having to worry about limitations. You can also save on the cost of court issuance fees if the dispute is resolved before the lawsuit.

So what`s the problem? Two recent cases – Russell v. Stone and Muduroglu vs. Stephenson Harwood – illustrate the disadvantage of status quo agreements. We look at the benefits and pitfalls. It is not possible for the court to extend the limitation period in advance. In addition, outside the areas of personal injury and defamation, there is no discretion to extend the restriction. Therefore, in cases where the limitation period is approaching but the applicant is not willing to initiate proceedings, the conclusion of a moratorium or standstill agreement should be considered. The General Court examined the correct approach to the interpretation of the recitals and their interaction with the operational terms in the light of recent developments in the Law on the Interpretation of Contracts.

If the recitals and operational provisions of an agreement are clear but incompatible, preference should in principle be given to operational provisions (Re Moon (1886) 17 Q.B.D. 275). However, the courts are now placing more emphasis on the facts and the recitals are increasingly taken into account to facilitate the interpretation of the contract. In reviewing the agreement, Justice Coulson criticized the drafting of the agreements. It noted that the recital contained terminology relating to an extension. However, the operational clause in the corpus of the agreement concerned the suspension of time and he therefore concluded that this was the correct interpretation of the agreement. The action was admitted. The defendants provided quantity measurement and project management services for the plaintiffs` construction project. The project was fraught with pitfalls, for which the plaintiffs held the defendants accountable. The parties have concluded three standstill agreements, the third of which expires on 30 November 2016.

On 1 December 2016, the plaintiffs brought an action against the defendants. The defendants argued that the claims were time-barred. Limitation should always be at the forefront of lawyers` concerns, but this is especially true given the challenges facing COVID-19. An understanding of the tools at your disposal should help limit difficulties, and a key tool is a moratorium on the limitation or a status quo agreement. Two scenarios can lead to process abuse in this context. The first, illustrated by Lewis v. Ward Hadaway, was triggered by a cash flow problem in the face of rising court costs. The defendants refused to enter into a standstill agreement, so the plaintiffs had to issue in a way that saved time before receiving disbursement funding to pay the legal costs. The plaintiffs` lawyers paid the fees themselves. In order to reduce court costs, they set lower information in the value statements on the claim forms than the plaintiffs wanted to claim.

They then amended the claim forms and paid the higher issuance fee before submitting the claim forms. This was considered an abuse of process. .