Back to Basics: Should Credit Hire be Stripped? - Gary Herring - Horwich Farrelly Solicitors
11/09/14. In Dimond v Lovell the House of Lords made it all seem so simple. In a case where the claimant sought hire charges in the princely sum of £346.63, it was held that a claimant who uses a credit hire service, even where doing so is perfectly reasonable, nonetheless cannot recover the full credit hire rate. Rather, the rate has to be reduced to account for the cost of the additional, and legally irrecoverable, services provided by the credit hire company over and above the costs of simple vehicle hire. Therefore, the proper measure of the recoverable loss is the ‘spot rate’.
So far, so good. But what is the ‘spot rate’, exactly?
The first attempt to find out came two years after Dimond in Clark v Ardington. Three possible methods were considered by the Court of Appeal. Firstly, simply applying a “reasonable discount” to the credit hire charge was rejected as too...
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