Commencing a Claim — SQE1 FLK1 Dispute Resolution

Your client supplied timber to a builder who has refused to pay £150,000. The dispute is about how much was delivered, not about the terms agreed. It turns on delivery notes and two warehouse staff. No point of law. And the client wants this run at the lowest possible cost. High Court or County Court? County Court.

Which surprises people, because the claim is worth more than £100,000, and there is a widespread belief that a figure like that sends you upstairs automatically. It does not. This whole topic is built out of numbers and deadlines, and almost every mark in it turns on knowing which number applies to what. Keep the timber claim in mind.

Here is the route. Which court, and what happens if you get it wrong. Then the tracks, and the four value thresholds the examiners love. Then the specialist courts. Then issuing under Part 7, and who has to be a party. Then service, which is where the real traps live: how you do it, when it counts as done, and the four months you have to do it in.

Start with the choice of court. Civil claims are heard in the County Court or the High Court, and most start in the County Court. There is no upper limit on the value of a contract or tort claim the County Court may try. Fix that first, because it is the opposite of what most people assume.

Practice Direction 7A restricts High Court issue rather than compelling it. A money claim may be started in the High Court only where its value is more than £100,000. And it should be started there only where the claimant believes it ought to be dealt with by a High Court judge. That means financial value, the complexity of the facts, the legal issues or remedies, or importance to the public.

So run the timber claim through that. Value, £150,000, so the High Court is available. Complexity? A quantity dispute settled on delivery notes and two witnesses. Importance to the public? None. Available is not the same as appropriate, and the County Court is cheaper.

And if you pick wrong? The claim is not a nullity. Issue in the High Court a claim that belonged in the County Court and the court may transfer it, on its own initiative. It weighs value, convenience, the availability of a specialist judge, complexity and public importance. It will not be struck out. But the choice can be reflected in costs, which is where it hurts.

Tracks next, and here are the numbers to memorise. Small claims: up to £10,000. Fast track: £10,000 to £25,000. Intermediate track: £25,000 to £100,000. Multi-track: over £100,000. Those four figures come round again and again.

But value alone does not decide it, and this is where good candidates get caught. The fast track is the normal track on three conditions. The claim is worth no more than £25,000. The trial is likely to last no longer than one day. And oral expert evidence is limited to one expert per party in no more than two fields. All three, not just the first.

The intermediate track was introduced in 2023. It needs three things too. Value no more than £100,000. A trial of no more than three days if the case is managed proportionately. And expert evidence limited to two experts per party. And the multi-track is the residual track. Anything the other three do not fit lands there.

Try one. A claim for £250,000 about a contaminated site. Two experts a side, four witnesses each, thousands of documents, and the defendant says it could be tried in three days. Intermediate track? No. The track is capped at £100,000, and a trial estimate cannot lift a cap. Multi-track.

Now the personal injury gateway, and this one is worth real marks. You may have been told that a personal injury claim under £10,000 always goes to small claims. That is not the rule. There are two limbs and both must be satisfied. The whole claim must be worth no more than £10,000, and the damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity must be no more than £1,500.

So a claim worth £8,500 in total, of which £1,200 is for pain, suffering and loss of amenity, is small claims work. But a £9,000 claim carrying £4,000 for pain, suffering and loss of amenity is fast track work, because the second limb fails. And where the injury comes from a road traffic accident on or after 31 May 2021, that second figure is £5,000.

Specialist courts, briefly, because they are pattern recognition. Company and shareholder disputes, insolvency, intellectual property, trusts and probate: the Chancery Division. Construction and engineering, including the negligence of architects and engineers: the Technology and Construction Court. Maritime and cargo: the Admiralty Court. Judicial review: the Administrative Court.

And two commercial lists that get confused. The Commercial Court takes the most substantial commercial claims, particularly international ones, with £500,000 or more as the working expectation. The Circuit Commercial Courts give business litigants access to commercial judges outside London, for more modest domestic disputes. They were called the Mercantile Courts until they were renamed in 2017, so older materials will tell you otherwise.

Issuing. Part 7 sets out how you start a claim, and the claim form is the document that formally does it. It must contain the full name and address of each party. A concise statement of the nature of the claim. The particulars of claim, or a note that they will follow. The remedy sought, including interest and costs. The value of the claim. And the court fee.

Particulars of claim carry the detail. For a contract claim: what was agreed, how the defendant breached, what loss resulted. For a tort claim: what duty was owed, how it was breached, the damage suffered, why the defendant is liable. Most claims are now issued electronically, the fee turns on the value, and fee remission is available on a low income.

Parties, under Part 19. The court may add a person where it is desirable so that it can resolve all the matters in dispute. Three labels to keep apart. A required party must be joined for the court to grant the relief sought. So all the beneficiaries of a trust may be required parties to a claim about its administration.

A necessary party should be joined if complete relief is to be given. Proceedings can run without them, but the judgment may not bind them. A guarantor is the standard example. A proper party may be joined but is not essential, and the court has a discretion. And a defendant with a claim of its own counterclaims under Part 20.

Service now. Issuing starts the claim. Service is what tells the defendant. Get it wrong and any judgment you obtain may be set aside, so this is not paperwork. It is the part of the topic examiners like most.

The central rule first. A claim form served by first class post is deemed served on the second business day after posting. Business days exclude weekends and bank holidays. Post on a Monday, and Tuesday is the first business day, Wednesday the second. Deemed served Wednesday. And it is deemed served even if the letter never arrives, provided you can prove posting.

Five ways to serve. First class post to the defendant's address. Personal service, which means handing the documents over or leaving them at the address with someone who appears to live there. On the defendant's solicitor, where they have said they will accept it. On a company, at its registered office. Or electronically, where the recipient has indicated willingness, under Practice Direction 6A.

One detail on personal service that gets tested. It can be carried out by a professional process server, by the court, or by any other person. Anyone except the claimant or the defendant themselves. A solicitor may do it. The party may not.

And here is the trap worth writing down. Insurers' solicitors write to say they are instructed to accept service on the defendant's behalf. Months later the claim form is posted to the defendant's own trading address instead, where it is mislaid. No response, and judgment in default. Set aside. Once solicitors are nominated in writing, the claim form must go to them.

Now separate two rules that look alike. The second business day rule is for the claim form. For everything after it, an email or other electronic service is deemed served the same business day if it is sent by 4.30pm, and otherwise on the next business day. Send particulars of claim at 5.10pm on a Thursday and you have served on the Friday.

The four-month rule. A claim form must be served within four months of the date of issue. Miss it and the claim form is no longer valid. But look carefully at what has to happen inside those four months, because this is the single best trap in the topic.

What you must do inside the four months is complete the relevant step for the method you have chosen. For first class post, that step is posting. A claim form is issued on 10 February, so the four-month period ends on 10 June. The solicitor posts on 9 June. Deemed service falls on 11 June, after the deadline. Is service valid? Yes.

The step was completed in time, and that is what validity turns on. The deemed date does something different: it fixes when the defendant's clock starts running. Two rules, two jobs. Confusing them is how a perfectly good claim gets argued away.

Extending time splits in two, and the halves are not alike. Apply before the four months expire and the court has a broad discretion; a good reason will usually do. Apply after they expire and the door is nearly shut. The court may extend only where it failed to serve the claim form itself, or where the claimant took all reasonable steps to comply and could not. And in either case, the claimant must have acted promptly.

Picture the consequence. A claim form issued two weeks before limitation runs out. The deadline is misdiarised, nobody serves, and five weeks after the four months expire somebody notices. The application fails, because a misdiarised date is not all reasonable steps. Limitation has gone too, so a fresh claim is statute-barred. That is a negligence claim against the solicitor.

Serving outside England and Wales generally needs the court's permission, and the court will want to see a reasonable prospect of establishing jurisdiction. Where the Hague Service Convention applies, the documents go through the receiving country's central authority, which then serves under its own law. Slower, but it gives you certainty.

And when the defendant is simply dodging you? Apply for service by an alternative method. You need evidence of what you tried, why it failed, and why the method you propose is likely to work. Courts have approved email, social media, text message, and in some cases a newspaper advertisement. The test is whether it is likely to bring the documents to the defendant's attention.

A word on how SQE1 tests this. You will not be asked to recite rule numbers. You get a scenario, five answers, and one instruction: pick the best. The rule numbers are scaffolding. What is being tested is whether you can apply a threshold, or count a deadline, without slipping.

If you keep only three. The four track figures: £10,000, £25,000, £100,000, and above. The second business day rule for a claim form served by post, counting business days only. And the four-month rule, where what must happen in time is the step, not the deemed service.

Traps the examiners set. One: more than £100,000 does not mean the High Court. It means the High Court is available. The County Court has no upper limit, and the wrong choice costs you in costs, not in validity.

Two: personal injury and the small claims track. Two limbs, not one. The whole claim no more than £10,000, and pain, suffering and loss of amenity no more than £1,500. Miss the second limb and you are on the fast track.

Three: count business days, not calendar days. Weekends and bank holidays do not count, and a bank holiday mid-week pushes the deemed date out. Four: once the other side's solicitors have said in writing that they will accept service, serve them. Serving the defendant direct is not good service.

Five: the four-month deadline is about the step, not the deemed date. And once it has passed, the court's discretion nearly disappears. A misdiarised date is not all reasonable steps, and if limitation has gone as well, so has the claim.

Quick check, and it is a calculation. A claimant posts a claim form by first class post on Friday the 13th of December. The following Monday, the 16th, is a bank holiday. Nothing else about that week is unusual. What is the deemed service date for that claim form?

Three candidate answers. One: Monday the 16th of December, three days after posting, counting the weekend. Two: Tuesday the 17th, the first business day after posting. Three: Wednesday the 18th, the second business day, the weekend and the bank holiday being excluded. Pause here if you want a moment.

The answer is three. Wednesday the 18th. A claim form is deemed served on the second business day after posting, and business days exclude weekends and bank holidays. Posted Friday the 13th, so the weekend goes, and Monday the 16th goes with it. Tuesday the 17th is the first business day. Wednesday the 18th is the second.

Why the others fail. One counts calendar days and includes the weekend, which is exactly the mistake the rule is designed to catch. Two stops one day short. Tuesday is the first business day after posting, not the second. And there is no five-business-day rule anywhere in this part of the rules, whatever December does to the calendar.

Five things to take away, and the timber claim still answers the first. One: the County Court has no upper limit, and more than £100,000 only makes the High Court available. At £150,000, on delivery notes and two witnesses, the County Court is right, and the claim is multi-track.

Two: the four track figures are £10,000, £25,000, £100,000, and above, but value is only the first condition. Trial length and expert evidence count too. Three: for personal injury, both limbs, the whole claim no more than £10,000 and pain, suffering and loss of amenity no more than £1,500.

Four: a claim form posted first class is deemed served on the second business day after posting, counting business days only. Five: you have four months to complete the relevant step, and after that the court can rarely help. Next time, Responding to a Claim.

Practise this topic with exam-style questions at sqe1prep.co.uk. This episode is for education and exam revision only, not legal advice, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the SRA or Kaplan.