The High Court ruled that the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) did not validly serve a personal injuries authorisation by tracked DX mail, and granted the relief sought by Helen Power in judicial review proceedings.
The case concerned an authorisation dated 16 July 2009, which PIAB said it had delivered to Power’s solicitors’ DX address five days later. Power’s solicitors said they never received it. The court accepted their evidence and found that the authorisation had not in fact reached them.
Power had applied to PIAB for an assessment after a serious road traffic accident in November 2006, in which her husband was killed and she was seriously injured. She rejected PIAB’s assessment in July 2009 because her injuries had not yet settled. Her solicitors later received an authorisation for a separate claim relating to her husband’s death, but said they had not received one for Power’s own claim.
PIAB sent a copy of the disputed authorisation in April 2010. It argued that the case was moot because Power had not issued personal injuries proceedings after receiving the copy, and that the application for judicial review was late. The court rejected those arguments. It found there remained a live dispute over whether time had started running against Power, and held that the delay argument was not made out. The court said that treating the original authorisation date as the start of the three-month period for seeking judicial review would be irrational when Power was unaware of it. It also found that the third-party-rights argument was speculative.
Under section 79 of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, documents could be delivered personally, left at a person’s residence or furnished service address, or sent by prepaid registered post to such an address. The court found that the section’s purpose included ensuring claimants received authorisations, given that limitation time runs from their issue and missing a deadline can have serious consequences.
The court held that the DX collection box was not a physical address of the kind contemplated by the Act. It also found tracked DX was not registered post: delivery was recorded by the sender, rather than by a person signing at the addressee’s premises. The judgment noted that the court rules allowing DX service in some circumstances did not govern this case.
The court granted the relief sought. The judgment does not set out a separate order directing PIAB to issue a fresh authorisation; the relief was the declaration and mandamus sought in the application, as described in the judgment.