Landmark Award of Exemplary Damages Totalling over £300,000 – Zoe Thompson succeeds in Tort of Deceit and Conspiracy Claim

Royal Mail Group v Gamero and Others

High Court, King’s Bench Division – Judgment of HHJ Wood KC

View the full judgment here

The High Court has awarded a total of £315,000 in exemplary damages to the Royal Mail Group in a claim brought in the torts of deceit and conspiracy.

Claims were commenced against 14 separate defendants by the Royal Mail Group, in respect of collisions with vehicles driven by their workforce.   There were various commonalities between all of the defendants: they came from Brazil; all were riding motor scooters of relatively modest value; in 11 out of the 14 claims, the engineer instructed was Dan Osborne of Evans Harding; in 13 out of 14 of those claims, the recovery garage was Millennium Motorcycles; in all but one of the potential claims, the solicitors instructed were Bond Turner; and in all the claims, there were substantial credit hire charges incurred, many times the total value of the damaged vehicle, because of the alleged impecuniosity of the defendants.  As to the collisions themselves, they were either non-existent accidents where no collision actually took place, or they were contrived accidents where the rider deliberately rode his motor scooter into collision with a reversing Royal Mail van after tailgating the van in its blind spot.

The Judge considered the case of Rookes v Barnard and found that the defendants’ conduct had been calculated to make a profit which would otherwise exceed the compensation payable to the Claimant, as the sums to be awarded by way of compensatory damages were relatively modest compared to the overall award which might have been made to each defendant had the claims continued. The High Court considered other high profile fraud ring cases, including the decision of the Court of Appeal in Axa Insurance UK Plc v Financial Claims Solutions Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 1330 where an award of £20,000 per defendant had been made for exemplary damages and the Tesco cases heard recently before HHJ Baucher in Central London County Court where an award of £18,000 per defendant had been made for exemplary damages.  The High Court considered that a higher level of exemplary damages should be awarded given the facts of this case and ordered each defendant to pay exemplary damages of £22,500.

Zoe Thompson, Head of Insurance Fraud at Nine Chambers, appeared for the Royal Mail Group and was instructed by Damian Rourke and Sarah Hill from Clyde & Co, and Royal Mail Group’s in-house solicitors Simon King and Joseph Stickings. This is the highest reported award of exemplary damages in a tort of deceit claim.