The Prudential Assurance Company Ltd v HM Revenue and Customs: CA 19 Apr 2016

The issues on this appeal all relate to what have been called ‘portfolio holdings’; that is to say dividends paid on shares in foreign companies held as investments, where the investor holds less than 10 per cent of the voting power in the company in question.
‘Our procedural system is and remains an adversarial one. It is for the parties (subject to the control of the court) to define the issues on which the court is invited to adjudicate. This function is the purpose of statements of case. The setting out of a party’s case in a statement of case enables the other party to know what points are in issue, what documents to disclose, what evidence to call and how to prepare for trial. It is inimical to a fair hearing that a party should be exposed to issues and arguments of which he has had no fair warning. If a party wishes to raise a new point, he should do so by amending a statement of case. We were told that by the time that skeleton arguments for trial were served each party would know what points were in issue. We do not regard that as sufficient. In this case, for example, HMRC’s skeleton argument was served about ten days before the trial started. If (as in fact happened in this case) HMRC wished to argue that the evidence proposed to be called by Prudential was directed at the wrong issue (being an issue that had not been raised before) ten days’ prior notice was manifestly inadequate.
Although in days gone by the court would routinely allow late amendments to statements of case, in more recent time attitudes have changed. It is now the case that the court requires strong justification for a late amendment. This is not only in the interest of the opposing party but also consonant with the interests of other litigants in other cases before the court and the court’s duty to allocate a proportionate share of the court’s resources to any particular case. Where a new issue arises which is not foreshadowed in a statement of case, a party needs the court’s permission to advance it. The court is then faced with a discretionary case management decision, to be exercised in accordance with the overriding objective.’

Lewison, Christopher Clarke, Sales LJJ
[2016] EWCA Civ 376, [2016] BTC 15, [2016] STI 1430, [2016] STC 1798, [2017] 1 All ER 815
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
At CAPrudential Assurance Company Ltd v Revenue and Customs SC 25-Jul-2018
PAC sought to recover excess advance corporation tax paid under a UK system contrary to EU law. It was now agreed that some was repayable but now the quantum. Five issues separated the parties.
Issue I: does EU law require the tax credit to be . .
CitedScott v Bridge and Others ChD 25-Nov-2020
Claim to recover money and property said to have been transferred by the claimant to the defendants or one or more of them. The money concerned came from a bank account belonging to the claimant. The property concerned consisted of two . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Corporation Tax, Litigation Practice

Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.562160