Last Updated on 5th March 2025
Limitation error claims can be made when a solicitor misses an important time limit.
In law there are time limits on when a claim can be made. These time limits are known as limitation periods. The length of the limitation period varies according to the area of law in question. In a personal injury case the usual limitation period is three years. For a professional negligence claim it is generally six years. When a solicitor misses a limitation period (ie fails to issue the claim in court before the period expires) then a limitation error claim can be made against them. The claim will usually be for compensation for the financial loss their client has suffered as a result of the solicitor’s mistake.
Here is a real-life example of a limitation error.
In a landlord & tenant claim, the Claimant had four months within which to make an application to the Court to implement a new lease. Two days before the limitation period expired, the Claimant’s solicitors prepared the application and arranged for it to be personally delivered to the Court. Unfortunately, there were some renovation works going on at the Court and the Court could not accept either the papers or payment of the issue fee. However, the Court agreed that if the papers were lodged in the court post box by 2pm, it would be accepted.
The Claimant’s solicitor agreed and left the papers at the Court with a covering letter which said:
“Please accept this letter as our authority for you to deduct the court fee of £308 using our account number …”
Unfortunately, only six months beforehand, the Court fee had increased to £332. Because the solicitors had only authorised £308, the court could not issue the claim form and returned the papers to the solicitors. By then, the limitation period had expired.
The solicitors made an immediate application to the Court for ‘relief from sanction’ on the grounds of an “inadvertent clerical error”. The application was dismissed. The judge who considered the matter felt that this was not a failure to comply with a rule or practice direction, thus the failure not to issue within time was not an error of the Court. Specifically, he said:
“There has been no breach of any rule, practice direction or court order and the obstacle standing in the way of the claim is not any sanction imposed by the Court but the fact that the limitation period had expired by the time the Claim Form was issued.”
The solicitors appealed, but the Court of Appeal agreed that the original decision was correct.
This is such an obvious limitation error as the problem would have been completely avoided if the solicitor had checked the court fee before leaving the note.
