Fundamental Dishonesty - decisions in 2025

Throughout 2025 the courts have clarified the application of fundamental dishonesty.  Judges have sought to strike a careful balance: on the one hand ensuring that fraudulent and exaggerated claims are firmly dealt with and discouraged, and on the other safeguarding genuine claimants from unfair or speculative accusations of dishonesty.

January 2025

Morris v Williams [2025] EWHC 218 (KB)

The central issue in this case was whether a letter from the claimant's solicitor which confirmed the claimant would “admit that he was fundamentally dishonest in respect of some of the representations made in respect of this claim…” could be introduced as evidence given this had been marked ‘without prejudice’. The district judge concluded that “to refuse to admit the Letter would permit the Claimant to benefit from an unambiguous impropriety” and would ultimately allow the claimant to put forward his case on an at least partly false basis, such that the letter was deemed admissible in court.

February 2025

Boyd v Hughes [2025] EWCH 435

The Court held “dishonest exaggeration was not sufficiently significant to mean that it went to the root or heart of the claim. It was dishonest embellishment to underpin an essentially honest claim.”
Therefore, given that such dishonesty only went to the value of pain, suffering and loss of amenity, that dishonesty was not sufficiently significant to mean that it went to the crux of the claim.  The claim, however, failed on the issue of liability under the Animals Act.

September 2025

Debbie O’Connell v The Ministry of Defence [2025] EWHC 2301 (KB)

The judge found “overwhelming” evidence of dishonesty. The judge considered the three questions posed in Muyepa v Ministry of Defence [2022] EWHC 2648 (QB) to be “useful tools” in determining whether the dishonesty was fundamental, namely: 

1. At what stage and in what circumstances did the dishonesty start? It was found that the dishonesty began when the claimant told her orthopaedic expert that she had adapted her vehicle, when she had not.
2. Does the dishonesty taint the whole of the claim or is it limited to a divisible element? The dishonesty took the form of directly concealing the fact that the claimant could do more than she stated and hiding the evidence of activities (or in the case of work, their extent) which showed that she could do more. It informed various heads of loss.
3. How does the value of the underlying valid claim compare with that of the dishonestly inflated claim? Whilst no attempt was made to value the claim (given that the claim had been dismissed) it was held that the underlying valid claim “may well have been worth no more than 50% of the inflated claim”.

October 2025

Perrin v Walsh [2025] EWHC 2536 (KB)

This case provided are minder of the issues the court will take into account when deciding whether to admit surveillance evidence. Despite the claimant highlighting deficiencies in the surveillance footage served by the defendant, the court allowed the defendants to rely upon the surveillance evidence despite “very real concerns” about the surveillance company. The court accepted that the footage was “clearly probative evidential material” and that it would be unfair to the defendant to deprive them of placing the evidence before the trial judge.  

Hakmi v East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust [2025] EWHC 2597 (KB)

This was a clinical negligence claim which was dismissed by the court. However, the court ordered the defendant to pay 15% of the claimant’s costs from the date that the issue of fundamental dishonesty was raised in the counter schedule for failing to establish fundamental dishonesty on the part of the claimant.

What will 2026 bring?

It is clear that claimants who would have received substantial damages will lose their claim entirely if they are dishonest. However, defendants need to ensure that they have good, clear and persuasive evidence of fundamental dishonesty, otherwise the court may exercise its discretion to impose cost consequences on defendants where appropriate.