Limitation of actions

The inquiry mandated by s 14(1) of the Limitation Act 1980 was retrospective, namely whether the claimant first had knowledge of it within or outside the period of three years prior to the date of issue. A claimant was likely to have acquired knowledge of the facts specified in s 14 when he first came reasonably to believe them. Before it was to amount to knowledge for the purposes of s 14(1), the belief had to be held “with sufficient confidence to justify embarking on the preliminaries to the issue of a writ, such as submitting a claim to the proposed defendant, taking legal and other advice and collecting evidence”. The focus was upon the moment when it was reasonable for the claimant to embark on such an investigation. Once the requisite knowledge had arisen, the difficulty of establishing the claim conferred no right thereunder to a further, open-ended, extension of the time within which the action had to be brought.