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9.5
Amending pleadings
Proposal 13
Rules making it more difficult to amend with a view to encouraging carefully prepared
statements of case early in the proceedings should be adopted.
Interim Report paras 296-298
The object of this Proposal was to discourage slackness in drawing up pleadings on
the part of pleaders who might assume that they could in due course amend the
pleadings to reflect the party's true case. It received a mixed response. The Bar
Association and the Law Society supported it, but many others
did not. The LAD
thought that it might work hardship on unrepresented litigants and one respondent
thought such a rule should only apply after discovery.
The Working Party considers that no new rule is needed and that leave to amend
should remain a matter within the court's discretion. The proposed requirement for
verification of all pleadings by a statement of truth is likely to be a sufficient incentive
for pleadings to be drawn up carefully. In any event, it is well-established that an
appeal to the court's discretion has to be based on material enabling the court to
exercise it favourably.
Accordingly, a party seeking to amend would in most cases
be expected to explain why the amendment is required and, if it introduces allegations
inconsistent with those previously verified, to explain how this arose.
Recommendation 36: Proposal 13 (for introducing rules making it more
difficult to amend pleadings) should not be adopted.
Notes
Including the BSCPI, a set of barristers' chambers, a firm of solicitors and the HKMLA.
A solicitors' firm.
Eg, Thamboo Ratnam v Thamboo Cumarasamy [1965] 1 WLR 8.
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