In the first of two articles on the 44th update to the CPR, Nicholas Bevan considers changes to the procedures governing pre-action admissions
Preparing or defending a personal injury claim is an ongoing investigative process. Accordingly, it is hardly surprising that sometimes where a party has made an admission of liability or contributory negligence they may later seek to withdraw it.
The reasons for parties changing their mind are legion. For example, an admission may be: based on incomplete evidence; induced by fraud or a genuine mistake of fact or law, perhaps offered in the confusion of the accident by one of the parties’ involved—or simply made erroneously by an inexperienced representative.
Similarly the motivations for attempting to withdraw an admission are many. The impetus could be no more than the desire to gain a tactical advantage or per-haps stimulated by the realisation that a claim is now much more valuable than first envisaged.
The circumstances in which a party can withdraw an admission made openly either in correspondence (prior to commencement of
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