ABSTRACT
Before commencing proceedings, the claimant should give the defendant warning of his intentions by sending to the defendant a ‘letter before action’. In a recent English case, Phoenix Finance Ltd v Federation International de l’Automobile,1 it was held that such a letter was essential under the new CPR, and a claimant who failed to give warning of proceedings, which he later lost, would be penalised in costs. Sir Andrew Morritt VC pointed out that ‘even before the CPR … letters before action were required in all but exceptional cases’, and ‘the whole thrust of the CPR and, in particular, the overriding objective makes it plain that a letter before action is at least as necessary under the new rules as under the old’.
