The Dekagram: 23rd of February 2026

This week, Conor Kennedy and William Dean consider two recent important appellate decisions. Conor reviews the Supreme Court’s long-awaited decision in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, which has opened the door for young claimants to recover damages for “lost years”, overturning decades of precedent. William looks at the Court of Appeal’s ruling in Fridman v Agrofirma Oniks on the relationship between procedural service requirements and common law principles requiring presence as a basis for jurisdiction.

An Unprincipled Distinction Abolished: The Supreme Court Rules on Damages for Lost Years in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Introduction

The Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2026] UKSC 5 on the issue of whether “lost years” damages could be awarded to a young child whose life expectancy had been reduced as a result of clinical negligence. Prior to the court’s judgment, young children were not able to recover such damages, following the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Croke v Wiseman [1982] 1 W.L.R. 71.

In a case with a 5-judge panel, Lord Reed gave a judgment with whom Lord Briggs agreed. Lord Burrows concurred, with a separate judgment with reasoning that he considered “similar” to Lord Reed’s. Lord Stephens gave a judgment in which he agreed with Lord Reed’s judgment, and Lord Briggs concurred with Lord Stephens’ reasoning. Lady Rose dissented.

The facts of the case are tragic, but unusually straightforward.  The Claimant suffered hypoxia during her birth in 2015. As a result, she was entirely dependent on others for her care, and had a reduced life expectancy of just 29 years. The parties agreed that:

1. if the Claimant had not sustained the index injury, she was likely to have had a normal life expectancy, to have worked to the age of 68, and to have received some sort of pension thereafter.
2. Her loss of earnings to the age of 29 was agreed to be £160,000.
3. The trial judge (Ritchie J, formerly of this parish) had been barred from awarding lost years damages by the Court of Appeal’s decision in Croke.

At the outset, it is worth noting that the court heard no argument as to the basis on which damages for pecuniary losses during the lost years are awarded. In particular, there was no argument as to whether they are intended to compensate for the non-receipt of future economic benefits which, but for the injury, the Claimant would have received during the lost years, or whether they are intended to compensate for the immediate diminution in the Claimant’s earning capacity, viewed as a capital asset. The court indicated that it would be desirable to clarify this matter at some future point, when the opportunity arises for the court in another case.

The Judgments of the Court

After reviewing numerous authorities, and the approach of other common law jurisdictions, Lord Reed found that Croke had been decided on the basis that the claimant, as a young child, had had no dependants. That reasoning was both inconsistent with legal principles, and with the relevant authorities, because a claimant’s claim for lost years is in respect of the claimant’s own loss, not in respect of anyone else’s, and his or her own right to damages is not in any way dependent on how they might be used.

Lord Reed noted that there might be reasons of social policy for drawing a distinction between claimants with dependants and claimants without, but observed that such social policy distinctions lay within the domain of the legislature rather than the courts.

Lord Reed gave short shrift to the Respondent’s argument that the assessment of damages for lost years, where the claimant is a child, is a matter of speculation. The general principle that a claimant is entitled to be placed in the position they would have been in had the tort not been committed applied, regardless of difficulties of precision in assessing a claimant’s loss. Pecuniary loss in terms of future loss of earnings is always difficult to assess, because the future is uncertain and subject to countless continencies, but the law does not insist on proof that events would in fact have taken a particular course.

Further to the above, the court noted that developments such as the use of actuarial tables of increasing sophistication, and statistical evidence of average earnings, had significantly reduced the uncertainty of assessing future loss. In the present case, evidence about the Claimant’s family background had enabled the parties to reach agreement about the educational qualifications, and about the type of employment which she would have entered, but for her injury.

Lord Burrows also held that Croke was inconsistent with the law laid down in the House of Lords’ decisions in the cases of Pickett and Gammell, “it follows that, as we have not been asked to overrule Pickett or Gammell, it is Croke that must be overruled.”

Lord Burrows rejected the proposition that it would always be too speculative to assess future pecuniary losses for young children, also citing the increased sophistication of actuary involvement and statistics.

In a section headed “Revisiting Pickett”, Lord Burrows noted that the court had not been asked to overrule Pickett, and that the court had been faced with an acceptance that lost years awards are valid. He wrote “Nevertheless, I am of the view that a reconsideration of Pickett and Gammell is called for […] it strikes me as important to consider in detail two interconnected issues.

The first and most fundamental is whether there is any convincing justification for treating a lost years award as compensating a pecuniary loss of the injured claimant. Lost years damages are controversial when viewed as compensating the claimant’s own loss because they cut across the normal principle that there can be no loss to the claimant suffered after the claimant’s death. The claimant can suffer no pecuniary loss (or nonpecuniary loss) once he or she is dead. As it is put in McGregor on Damages at para 41-119, “Wages in heaven should not be awarded when they are not needed on earth.”

[…]

The second issue is whether Pickett should be reinterpreted as allowing lost years claims only as a means of compensating dependants.” There were sounder reasons for this second proposition, although as Lord Burrows observed: “to accept this view would contradict the normal principle (reflected in the compensatory aim of damages being to put the claimant into as good a position as if the tort had not been committed […]” (underlining added, in place of italics in the original judgment).

Comment

On the face of it, the court’s judgment is a victory for claimants. It is clear, however, that the judgment is not the last word on claims for lost years. Lord Burrows’ apparent scepticism of the merit of allowing claimants to recover, for lost earnings that they will never need, is sure to invite another leapfrog appeal to the Supreme Court before too long.

This case may ultimately prove to have been a Pyrrhic victory for claimants who, having won the battle of the distinction between young claimant and older claimants, may in time lose the war of the recoverability of damages for lost years.

About the Author

Conor Kennedy has a busy civil, commercial and regulatory practice, and enjoys working closely with professional and lay clients to provide clear and user-friendly advice.

Conor has extensive experience of advocacy in the County Court and the High Court, as well as in regulatory and employment tribunals. Much of his work involves a cross-border element. Conor regularly provides training and seminars to professional clients on all areas of his practice.

 Service in the jurisdiction on someone outside the jurisdiction – fundamentally, what is service?

If a claimant serves a defendant at the latter’s current or last known address – in other words, complies with the usual rules for service specified in Part 6 of the Civil Procedure Rules – is that effective if the defendant was outside the court’s jurisdiction at the time? This was the question considered by the Court of Appeal in Fridman v. Agrofirma Oniks L.L.C. [2026] EWCA Civ 139.

The Appellant, Mikhail Fridman, was described by the court as an “immensely wealthy ‘Russian oligarch’”. He had dual Russian and Israeli nationality and moved to London in 2013. In 2016, he bought Athlone House, a Victorian Mansion overlooking Hampstead Heath, which he managed through a limited company. He was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2019.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine intervened and, in 2022, the Appellant was sanctioned by the United Kingdom. He was designed as an “excluded person”, in consequence of which his leave to remain was cancelled and he was not permitted to enter the United Kingdom. He left the jurisdiction in 2023 for medical reasons and subsequently travelled to Moscow.

The Respondents brought a claim against him for damages for breach of contract in connection with loan participation notes. The claim was issued in February 2024.

Rule 6.9 requires a defendant to be served at his “usual or last known address”. If there is reason for the claimant to believe that the address so defined “is an address at which the defendant no longer resides or carries on business, the claimant must take reasonable steps to ascertain the address of the defendant’s current residence or place of business”. If such an address is found, service must be effected there; but otherwise the claimant must consider if there is an available alternative place or method for service and, if so, make an application to the court.

Within the four-month period for service, the Respondents sent a copy to Athlone House by first class post, hand-delivered a copy at Athlone House (in an envelope addressed to the Appellant) and sent/delivered copies to the Appellant’s previous solicitor (not instructed to accept service) and the registered address of a holding company founded by the Appellant.

Owing to the uncertainties, the Respondents sought a declaration from the High Court that the Appellant had been validly served. The Appellant counter-applied under Part 11 of the Civil Procedure Rules, challenging jurisdiction. In January 2025, Bryan J. held that the Appellant had not ceased to be resident in the jurisdiction notwithstanding his status as an excluded person; and, in any event, Athlone House was the Appellant’s last known address and the Respondents had taken reasonable steps (without success) to find his current residence.

The Appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal and, on 10 February 2026, the first instance decision was overturned.

Lewison L.J.’s analysis started with rule 32 in the 16^th edition of Dicey, Morris and Collins on the Conflict of Laws: “The court has jurisdiction … to entertain a claim in personam against a defendant who is present in England and duly served there with process.” In Chellaram v. Chellaram (No 2) [2002] EWHC 632 (Ch) at [47], Lawrence Collins J. (the Collins of Dicey, Morris and Collins) unsurprisingly supported that proposition, saying that “it has always been, and remains, a fundamental rule of English procedure and jurisdiction that a defendant may be served with originating process within the jurisdiction only if he is present in the jurisdiction at the time of service, or deemed service”. The House of Lords and the Supreme Court had held similarly, including in Stichting Shell Pensioenfonds v. Krys [2014] UKPC 41, where at [27] Lord Sumption and Lord Toulson said that for a litigant to be “amenable to [the English court’s] personal jurisdiction” he “must be present within the jurisdiction or amenable to being served with the proceedings out of the jurisdiction, or else he must have submitted voluntarily”.

The result, Lewison L.J. concluded, was that “the fact of service in accordance with the C.P.R. does not conclusively establish the court’s jurisdiction over a defendant”. This was a jurisdictional, not procedural, question; so the Civil Procedure Rules had not changed the position and they were not “sufficient to displace the presumption of territoriality”. The Court of Appeal reviewed the authorities, many of them at first instance, and indicated agreement with H.H.J. Matthews in Broom v. Aguilar [2024] EWHC 1764 that “the authorities make clear that, in a case where the defendant is in fact outside the jurisdiction, the ‘fundamental rule’ adverted to by Lawrence Collins J. in Chellaram … applies”: the defendant “is simply not subject to the jurisdiction of the English court, unless brought within the relevant statutory extension to persons abroad”.

(Lewison L.J. emphasised that his conclusions did not leave the Respondents without a way to take the case forwards. Rule 6.15 permitted service by alternative means or at an alternative place to what was ordinarily provided; and rule 6.1 provided that, in an appropriate case, the court could order that Part 6 did not apply to service.)

Accordingly, the important factual question was whether the Appellant had been present in the jurisdiction of England and Wales at the time of service. Lewison L.J. noted that “whether a particular place is someone’s residence or usual residence is a multi-factorial evaluative judgment; or as some of the cases describe it, a question of fact and degree”. He held that “[p]lainly” the Appellant had not been physically present at the date of service. It had also not been a “temporary absence” (such that residence had continued): the Appellant was subjected to “enforced and indefinite removal” from the United Kingdom; any ability to act on a wish to return (if he had one) was “for practical purposes … outside his control”; and the legal impediment to his return constituted “a definite break in the pattern of his life”.

The result of all of this was that the Appellant had not been validly served. He had not present in England and Wales at the time the Respondents attempted to serve the proceedings; and fundamentally the issue was one of jurisdiction, rather than (merely) procedure, such that, in the circumstances, compliance with Part 6 had been insufficient.

About the Author:

William Dean has a busy personal injury practice involving claims arising from serious injury and death. He regularly advises and appears in cases of factual, evidential legal and procedural complexity, including at trial. He is a contributor to the Butterworths Personal Injury Litigation Service and the APIL Guide to RTA Liability. He is the Convenor of the Examination Board of the Diploma in Forensic Medical Sciences. He also acts in tribunal claims against the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, and is a contributor to the leading textbook in that field.