The High Court has dismissed a motion by Albert Reid to have John Molloy’s personal injury claim ruled statute barred, holding that the relevant date for calculating the limitation period was when a Personal Injuries Assessment Board authorisation would have arrived by post in the ordinary course.
The preliminary issue was directed by court order on 20 December 2010. The facts were not disputed; the question was how to interpret “date of issue” in section 50 of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003.
Molloy alleges he suffered a significant injury on 15 June 2002. The usual three-year limitation period would have expired on 14 June 2005. The Board received his completed application for authorisation on 17 May 2005 and posted the authorisation by registered post on 22 September 2005. The judgment said 29 days of the original limitation period remained when the Board received the application.
If the six-month period began on the posting date, proceedings had to be issued by 19 April 2006, and the personal injuries summons issued on 20 April would have been late. If the relevant date was the following day, when the letter would ordinarily have been delivered, the claim was in time.
The defendant argued that “issued” meant the date the authorisation was posted. Molloy’s counsel argued that section 18 of the Interpretation Act 1937 applied, deeming postal service to occur when a letter would be delivered in the ordinary course, unless the contrary was proved.
Mr Justice Ryan found that section 79(1)(c) of the 2003 Act, which permits a document to be sent in a prepaid registered letter, did not exclude section 18. Registration was a mode of sending by post, the judge said, and did not displace the ordinary-course-of-post rule. The court concluded that the relevant date was presumed receipt, rather than the day the authorisation was posted.
The defendant’s motion was dismissed. The court therefore held that the claim was not statute barred. The judgment did not decide the underlying personal injury claim.