Elizabeth Boon successfully strikes out claim relating to McLaren P1 hypercar – the court confirming there is no special approach to pleadings requirements in fire claims
19th May 2026
The Claimant was the owner of a McLaren P1 hypercar which he had bought from the Second Defendant (“Stratstone”) in May 2015. Following an accident in June 2015, the Claimant engaged the First Defendant (“McLaren”) to rebuild the vehicle. Thereafter, Stratstone undertook various repair, service, and maintenance works on the Vehicle. The Vehicle caught fire when the Claimant was driving it in October 2017, and was a total loss.
The Claimant commenced proceedings against both Defendants alleging that the Fire was caused by their breaches of contract and/or negligence.
Both Defendants applied to strike out the claim on the basis that the Particulars of Claim failed to set out the essential facts needed to constitute a cause of action (and in particular, to identify the alleged causative defect). The Claimant argued that the cause of the Fire, and the relevant breach was adequately pleaded, and advanced two principal points:
1. A particular approach should be taken in cases where property has been destroyed by fire, and that in such cases, the court will be prepared to infer that the fire was caused by the pleaded negligence, and;
2. The court will require less particularisation of the mechanism of causation than would otherwise be the case, where a claimant alleges the breach of a contractual term imposing strict liability.
The judge gave a very detailed account of the applicable law, and found:
1. “A claimant must plead its case on causation with sufficient particularity to enable the court and the other parties to understand what that case is. A claimant is entitled to say that the relevant event must have been due to one of two or more causes, and that whichever of those in fact caused the event give rise to liability. However, if it seeks to proceed on that basis such a claimant must adequately identify the relevant fault or faults on the part of the defendant, and explain how each of those causes flows from such fault” (para 46), and;
2. In contrast to Ide v ATB Sales [2008], there the claimant had identified that the seals had failed prematurely, and the court found that the defects in the seals caused the oil leakage (and it was not necessary to prove the precise mechanism of the premature failure). Here, the Claimant had failed to identify which relevant part of the Vehicle he said had allegedly caused the coolant leak.
“However, the fact that he does not have to prove or plead how the parts came to be unsatisfactory does not mean that he does not have to prove and plead the ways in which they were unsatisfactory” (para 53);
3. There was no special approach which is to be applied in cases of damage by fire in respect of the court inferring that the fire was the result of the breach of contract or negligence alleged. That approach is fact-based, and is not confined to instances of damage by fire.
“The court’s willingness to draw such inference in appropriate cases does not remove the need for a claimant to identify, plead, and prove the relevant failing”. (paras 61 and 62)
Applying the above to the Claimant’s Particulars of Claim, the judge found that both the pleas on causation and the pleas on breach were insufficient. The Claimant has simply (as least in relation to Stratstone) recited the alleged contractual obligations in a negative form and put “failing properly” in front of them.
Finally, the judge dismissed the Claimant’s submission that there was a substantial asymmetry of information between the Claimant and the Defendants, and found that it was not appropriate, when considering a strike out application, to have regard to the prospect of the picture changing after disclosure, and to the prospect of a claimant being properly able to articulate its claim at that stage. The court made clear that the pleadings came first, and the duty to disclose followed.
The judge considered that the Claimant should not be given an opportunity to remedy the deficiencies in its Particulars of Claim, as the Claimant had argued robustly that the claim was adequately particularised, and that due to the number of expert examinations of the Vehicle over a period of 8 years, it was too late for the Claimant to be given a further opportunity to advance a properly particularised claim.
A copy of the judgment can be found here.
