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Butterworths Personal Injury Litigation Service/Division VI Limitation/E When does time start to run?/1
Different triggers for different cases

When does time start to run?

1 DIFFERENT TRIGGERS FOR DIFFERENT CASES

(1)

From the accrual of the action or the date of knowledge

[501]
Most actions run from date of accrual of the action. In personal injury cases, however, time runs from the
date of accrual of the action or the claimant's date of knowledge, if later1.
1

Limitation Act 1980, s 11(4).

(2) When does the claimant have knowledge?

[502]-[503]
Date of knowledge is defined in s 14 of the Limitation Act 1980 ('LA 1980') and comes in two forms:

(a) Actual knowledge (s 14(1)) is acquired when the individual claimant can be shown to
know three or four things:

1.
2.
3.
4.

(i) significance of injury;

(ii) attributability;
(iii) identity of defendant; and/or
(iv) identity of tortfeasor for whose acts the defendant is liable, and the facts creating
that liability.

3
4

For how this works in practice, see para [511]ff.

(b) Constructive knowledge: s 14(3) delineates the legal concept of constructive knowledge
as where, by definition, a claimant has in fact been unaware of his or her cause of action up to
a given date outside the primary limitation period but the court holds on the facts that he or she
should have been making enquiries and his or her failure to do so entitles the defendant to rely
on a limitation defence1.

Knowledge is not, however, a straightforward issue and is highly fact sensitive. As Foskett J. put it in AB v
Ministry of Defence2:

'Whilst it is possible to deduce from the authorities cited some well-established broad propositions of
principle, it is by no means clear that there is always unanimity about the application of those
principles in a given case. Even in what might be termed an "ordinary" case, there can be difficulties in
arriving at the "right" answer in relation to the issue of knowledge.'

The difficulty to which Foskett J refers in his careful and thorough judgment is illustrated by the fact that it
was overturned unanimously by the Court of Appeal and on further appeal the Supreme Court split on a 4:3

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majority.

(3)

See para [551]ff.

[2009] EWHC 1225, (QB), (2009) Times, 9 June at para 509.

Defective products

[504]
Section 14(1A) applies in actions for damage by defective products and is dealt with in more detail at para
[131].
(4)

Statutory extension of the date of knowledge

[505]-[510]
In addition to the court's discretion to extend the time limits under s 33 (see Section F below), there are a
number of circumstances in which the date of knowledge is mandatorily deferred on proof of certain facts.
Those most relevant to personal injury actions are s 28, which provides that time does not run against
persons under a disability, and s 32, which provides that where there is fraud, concealment or mistake time
will not run until the facts are or should have been discovered by the claimant. Both are dealt with below at
paras [581]ff and [631]ff respectively.