Accident Exchange welcomes Appeal Court verdict

Accident Exchange has welcomed today's decision by the Court of Appeal to strike out Autofocus’ witness immunity claim in its ongoing credit hire rate dispute.

The credit hire organisation said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange it will continue with its action for damages against Autofocus.

The reporting company had claimed that the evidence given in a number of credit hire cases by their employees - disputed by Accident Exchange - was subject to the witness immunity rule.

However, this was rejected by the Court of Appeal this morning following a hearing on 9 June. The High Court rejected Autofocus's earlier bid in December 2009.

Accident Exchange said that it will now make an application to the High Court to "amend the original proceedings in this case to include all of the Autofocus employees against whom we believe we have further evidence of dishonesty."

Accident Exchange also confirmed that it has also been granted leave to appeal the judgment in Archer v Skanska Corporation and Stewart v Rees, in which both cases included evidence given by the same Autofocus employee.

In the Archer case, Accident Exchange has applied to have the Autofocus rate surveyor made personally liable for the costs of the appeal and the retrial and also to consider an application for permission to apply to commit him to prison for contempt of court.

Accident Exchange chief executive Steve Evans said: "We are delighted with the judgment from the Court of Appeal because it now allows for the hearing of the substantive issues of our claim in open court to be resumed after a delay of six months.

"We are also encouraged with the judgment in Stewart where, for the first time in one of these cases, we have a Judge confirming that the Autofocus evidence given in that case led to the trial Judge accepting a fictitious spot rate figure as the basis for making his judgment."

"He added: "Whilst this delay to the substantive litigation has been ongoing, we have prepared further cases from the population of approximately 2,500 which we now intend to seek leave to appeal.

"In addition, and following today's judgment in the Court of Appeal, we have decided to bring into the main action against Autofocus, as co-defendants, the majority of those 13 employees of Autofocus who left the business hurriedly in September 2009 and against whom we have evidence of improper behaviour in order that they can fully account for the investigations that they say they conducted on gathering hire rates, the veracity of the evidence they gave and the reasons for their rapid departure from Autofocus when our suspicions were aroused."