Abuse of Process: What is Warehousing in Civil Litigation?
The civil litigation process is where parties have their disputes resolved and the court’s purpose is to enable this, either by rubber stamping a settlement or making a judgment. Therefore, if a Claimant commences litigation with no intention to bring matters to a conclusion or is inactive, this can amount to an abuse of process. This is often called warehousing.
Warehousing – an abuse of the civil litigation process – can cover a few scenarios.
Firstly, warehousing can be where a claimant is inactive in the claim and has a lack of intention to pursue the claim or bring matters to conclusion.
Warehousing also applies to the situation where the Claimant had no intention for the time being to pursue the claim but may do so in the future.
Where an application has been brought to strike out a claim for warehousing, it is necessary for the court to consider whether the conduct is an abuse of process and, secondly, whether it is disproportionate to strike out a claim.
A strike out for warehousing where there has been a delay will be rare. Courts will often set a case management timetable and any significant departure will be sanctioned by the court. It should therefore not be possible for a claimant to warehouse a civil claim by delaying matters. However, in the unlikely event that they are, an unless order in the first instance would be more appropriate.
The recent decision of Morgan Sindall Construction and Infrastructure Ltd v Capita Property and Infrastructure highlighted that a claimant may put matters on hold and wait for a related action to resolve and it not be considered as warehousing.
It further highlighted that, if a defendant is alleging warehousing, they cannot allow the action to continue and then sometime later seek to strike out.
Warehousing is complicated and will heavily turn on the facts. It will be down to the Judge’s opinion on whether delays are justified or whether there has been an abuse of process.
