Court of Appeal backs multi-claimant approach in Black Horse Limited v Stuart Angel motor finance claims

The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by eight motor finance providers against case management directions allowing more than 5,000 discretionary commission claims to proceed under single claim forms per defendant, while criticising both sides for the litigation's slow and costly progress over three and a half years.

In Black Horse Limited v Stuart Angel & Ors [2026] EWCA Civ 831, Lord Justice Coulson, with whom Lord Justice Stuart-Smith and the President of the Family Division agreed, upheld the decision of Mr Justice Ritchie that the convenience test under CPR 7.3 was satisfied in claims brought under section 140B of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 over undisclosed discretionary commission arrangements between the defendants and car dealers. The claims, brought by individuals who purchased vehicles over a fourteen year period, allege that the relationships arising from their credit agreements were unfair because of the dealers' failure to disclose commission tied to the interest rate set.

His Honour Judge Worster, case managing the claims in Birmingham County Court, had originally disaggregated them into individual claim forms, applying the test from Abbott v Ministry of Defence. That approach was subsequently undermined by the Court of Appeal's decision in Morris v Williams & Co Solicitors, which rejected any exclusionary test under CPR 7.3 and confirmed that convenience is to be assessed broadly. Mr Justice Ritchie re-exercised the discretion and concluded the claims could properly proceed together, identifying what he termed broad common issues and emphasising the value of trying lead cases to a conclusion as a route to widescale settlement. He also made case management directions requiring generic defences and substantial disclosure from the defendants, including the underlying brokerage agreements.

Lord Justice Coulson rejected the defendants' central submission that claims requiring individualised fact specific assessment of unfairness could never be conveniently disposed of together. He held that the test of convenience under rule 7.3 must encompass the court's case management powers throughout the litigation, not merely the prospect of a single final determination, and confirmed that commonality of issue does not require that a decision bind every claimant to be relevant to convenience. The judgement distinguished between the determination of common issues, which can guide proceedings without resolving every claim, and the trial of lead cases, whose persuasive rather than binding effect can nonetheless drive commercial settlement across a wider cohort, as recognised in Lancaster v Peacock and reflected in the Supreme Court's own reasoning in Johnson and Hopcraft v Close Brothers Limited.

The court did, however, reject the suggestion that a large undisclosed commission could give rise to any presumption of unfairness, reaffirming that the assessment under section 140A remains a broad, fact specific inquiry in which no single factor is determinative. Lord Justice Coulson was also critical of the claimants' failure to plead any individual claim with proper particulars, describing the absence of basic pleaded facts as a significant procedural failing that had hampered the identification of workable common issues and lead cases from the outset.

Despite reservations about aspects of the reasoning below, the court found no basis to interfere with the exercise of discretion, given the high threshold applicable to appeals against case management decisions. The appeal was dismissed, the case management directions were upheld, and the matter was remitted to Birmingham County Court for further directions, with the court noting that the wider question of reforming CPR 7.3 itself may now merit reconsideration by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee.