Irving v Morgan Sindall [2018]: What It Settled
Irving v Morgan Sindall fixed the impecuniosity threshold at a realistic level: a claimant does not have to exhaust every theoretical resource — savings earmarked for other needs, an overdraft, borrowing — to qualify as impecunious. The test remains what the claimant could reasonably have done, not what was arithmetically possible.
§ 01What was the case about?
Ms Irving, whose income was modest, hired on credit after a non-fault accident. The defendant argued she was not impecunious because she had resources she could in theory have used to fund ordinary hire — including the possibility of borrowing on an overdraft. The county court accepted a version of that argument; the appeal to the High Court tested where the impecuniosity line from Lagden actually sits.
§ 02What did the court decide?
Turner J held the claimant was impecunious. Applying Lord Nicholls' formulation in Lagden — inability to pay hire charges without making sacrifices that could not reasonably be expected — the court held a claimant is not required to run down modest funds needed for ordinary living, nor to take on debt, in order to spare the wrongdoer's insurer the credit hire rate. The judgment also addressed the interaction with the hirer's liability under the agreement, confirming that a claimant's potential protection from pursuit does not itself defeat the claim — consistent with Giles v Thompson (1993).
§ 03What did it change in practice?
It stopped the impecuniosity threshold drifting upwards. Defendants' submissions that a claimant “could have found the money somehow” now meet a High Court authority holding that reasonableness, not exhaustion, is the standard. In day-to-day litigation it calibrates how bank statements are read: the presence of funds is the start of the argument, not the end of it.
§ 04Which later cases applied it?
Diriye v Bojaj (2020) cemented the procedural half of the modern impecuniosity regime — what must be pleaded and proved — while Irving remains the standard citation on the substantive threshold.
§ 05Related reading on this site
New judgments, summarised as they land
The Case Digest is a planned email briefing covering significant new credit hire judgments, drawn from this tracker. Subscription is not open yet; the page explains what it will carry and how it is written.