Limitation of action

The starting date for the three-year period under s 14A of the Limitation Act 1980 was the “earliest date” on which any given claimant had the knowledge required for bringing a claim in damages in relation to the damage with which the claim was concerned and the right to bring the claim.

Knowledge in that context did not mean certainty, but knowledge of sufficient essential facts or matters to institute either a claim or the taking of advice or the collation of evidence would often suffice to institute the “earliest date”. That “knowledge” was of the material facts about the damage for which damages were claimed and of other facts relevant to the claim.

Those were such facts as would lead a reasonable person who had suffered the damage in question to consider it sufficiently serious to justify instituting proceedings for damages; such facts included that the damage in question was attributable at least