On 23 August 2021, the Court of Appeal refused the defendant permission to appeal Johnson J’s reassessment of the lost years claim in Head v Culver Heating.
The defendant sought permission to appeal on two grounds. The first was that the judge wrongly interpreted and therefore misapplied the judgment of the Court of Appeal in carrying out his reassessment. The second was that the judge wrongly attributed to Mr Head an intention, had he lived, gradually to transfer the entirety of his and his wife’s shareholding to his sons.
The application for permission to appeal came before Bean LJ, who gave the lead judgment of the Court of Appeal when Claimant’s appeal was granted in January of this year.
In respect of ground one, Bean LJ held that “Johnson J correctly applied the guidance which we gave. The distinction which the Appellant Defendant draws in ground 1 between Mr Head’s income or earnings received in the sense of being taken out of the business and those earned but ploughed back into the company seems to me to be flatly contrary to paragraph 33 of the judgment handed down on 18 January 2021, and Johnson J was unarguably right to reject it.”
In respect of ground two, Bean LJ held that “this was a finding of fact which the judge was entitled to make on the evidence before him and was consistent with the guidance given in paragraph 35 of the judgment of this court.”
Our post about the Court of Appeal’s decision in respect of the Claimant’s appeal can be read here and our post about Johnson J’s re-assessment of the lost years claim can be read here.
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