A married couple who presented a false piece of evidence to court in support of a personal injury claim have avoided an immediate prison sentence.

Mr Justice Soole ruled in Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Ltd v Hamblett & Anor that both Gail and Graham Hamblett were each guilty of contempt of court for the way they presented their case.

Mrs Hamblett, a self-employed florist, had claimed damages against a flower supplier for personal injury after a fall at its premises in Liverpool in 2018, which she said was caused by her slipping on a pool of water. Following a two-day trial, Recorder Knifton KC dismissed the claim in 2023 and found it to have been fundamentally dishonest. The judge held that, whilst carrying a large box of flowers and with her vision obscured, Mrs Hamblett had simply stumbled into a display bucket of flowers.

Insurer RSA pursued the pair for contempt based on the judge’s decision that Mrs Hamblett had produced a ‘doctored invoice’ in support of her claim. This was presented to the court and purported to show that the wholesaler had invoiced her for the alleged cost of broken flowers caused by her fall. It was in fact a tampered version of an invoice from 2017 issued to Mrs Hamblett.

Florist flowers

The judge held that Mrs Hamblett had stumbled into a display bucket of flowers (stock image)

Source: iStock

The court heard that the injured woman had instructed solicitors to run her claim on a no win no fee basis. But on the morning of the trial, when new documents were produced, they had wanted to walk away. Mrs Hamblett said she felt ‘very let down’ by her solicitors because she had not been warned about her exposure to costs and suggested in court they had been ‘lackadaisical all the way through’.

Soole J said there was no invoice sent or delivered to Mr or Mrs Hamblett and that each of them gave dishonest evidence to that effect in their witness statements. They were each ‘most unsatisfactory and unreliable witnesses’ and her account on the issue of the doctored invoice was ‘wholly unconvincing and obviously untrue’. She had known this from the many requests from her solicitors to provide the document, which she claimed had been stuck in the loft and out of reach. The alterations made to an existing invoice were ‘undoubtedly amateurish’ and made by the couple and/or someone on their behalf, but it was not inevitable the deception would have been uncovered.

‘Until the truth did emerge the doctored invoice evidently made a strong impression both on Mrs Hamblett’s solicitor and on the judge,’ said Soole J. ‘In any event the deliberate presentation of a false but potentially relevant document in litigation itself constitutes an interference with the course of justice.’

He made clear that a fine would be an inadequate sanction and that a four-month sentence was appropriate. This was suspended for a year based on the mitigation and the potential significant harmful impact on others.

 

This article is now closed for comment.