Statements of Case

A statement of case is any document in which a party formally sets out its case for the court record: the claim form, the particulars of claim, the defence, a Part 20 claim, or a reply. These documents are not correspondence — they are the fixed architecture of the litigation. Once filed and served, they define what each side is required to prove, what it need not prove because the other side has conceded it, and what remains genuinely in dispute. CPR Part 16 is the rule governing the general requirements for the contents of statements of case, and Practice Direction 16 supplements Part 16 with the detailed, document-by-document requirements a drafter actually needs at the desk.

The claim form is the document that formally starts proceedings, and CPR 16.2 requires it to contain a concise statement of the nature of the claim — not a narrative of the facts, but a compressed label for what kind of claim this is (for example, a claim for damages for breach of contract). The claim form must also specify the remedy the claimant seeks — damages, an injunction, specific performance — because the court and the defendant need to know from page one what outcome is being sought.

Two further mandatory disclosures sit alongside this:

• Under CPR 16.3, a claimant must state the value of the claim on the claim form for most money claims, because the stated value drives track allocation and court fees.
• The claim form must state whether the claimant is claiming interest on the sum sought, since interest is not awarded by default — it must be pleaded to be recovered.

There is one further wrinkle worth remembering for practice: a claim form against the Crown must identify the government department or officer concerned. Suing "the Crown" in the abstract is not enough; the claim form has to name the specific department or officer, because that is who will actually be served and who will actually defend.

Source: Carl III af Det Forenede Kongerige by HM Government, OGL 3.

The particulars of claim is where the claimant's factual case is actually pleaded out. It can either be contained within the claim form itself, or served as a separate document — the claimant chooses the format, but not the timing. If the particulars are not included in the claim form, CPR 7.4 requires them to be served within 14 days after service of the claim form. Miss that window, and the claimant risks the claim form lapsing without a properly pleaded case behind it.

Substantively, CPR 16.4 requires particulars of claim to set out a concise statement of the facts on which the claimant relies — this is the narrative core of the pleading, distinct from the "nature of the claim" label already given on the claim form. Beyond the bare facts, several categories of claim carry their own mandatory disclosures, because English procedure treats certain remedies as too easily abused to leave unpleaded:

Particulars of claim must specify:

• Details of any claim for interest, including the legal basis, the rate claimed, and the daily rate of accrual.
• Details of any claim for aggravated damages.
• Details of any claim for exemplary damages.
• Details of any claim for provisional damages.

Think of these four as flags the claimant must plant early: a defendant reading the particulars should never be surprised, at trial, by a category of damages it never had the chance to prepare against.

There is also a documentary-transparency rule worth knowing: where the particulars of claim rely on a specific document, Practice Direction 16 requires the claimant to state where that document may be inspected. This lets the defendant go and look at the evidence a claim actually depends on, rather than pleading blind.

Finally, like every statement of case discussed below, particulars of claim must be verified by a statement of truth — a requirement explored in full further down, but worth flagging here because it is easy to forget when drafting.

Once the particulars of claim have landed, the clock starts running against the defendant, and the applicable deadline depends entirely on one procedural choice.

Filing an acknowledgment of service is therefore not a mere formality — it is a deliberate tactical move that doubles the drafting window from 14 to 28 days. And the rules go one step further in allowing party autonomy: the claimant and defendant may agree in writing to extend the period for filing a defence by up to 28 days without troubling the court at all. (Note: some study sources attribute this consensual-extension power to CPR 15.4 itself; it is more precisely housed in the neighbouring rule on agreed extensions — the operative point for SQE1 purposes is that the extension exists, is capped at 28 days, and requires nothing more than written agreement.)

Substantively, the defence has to do real analytical work, not just deny everything. For every allegation in the particulars of claim, the defence must fall into one of three buckets:

1. Allegations the defendant admits.
2. Allegations the defendant denies.
3. Allegations the defendant is unable to admit or deny, and therefore requires the claimant to prove.

Denial is not a free pass, either. Under CPR 16.5, a defendant who denies an allegation must state the reasons for the denial, and — where the defendant intends to put forward a different version of events — the defence must state that version. A bare "denied" with nothing more invites the very sanction the rule is designed to prevent.

That sanction is the deemed-admission trap: a defendant who fails to deal with an allegation in the particulars of claim is taken to admit it, unless the defendant has otherwise set out the nature of its case on that related issue. This is why competent defence drafting addresses every single paragraph of the particulars — silence is read as concession, not caution.

Like the particulars before it, the defence must be verified by a statement of truth.

Every statement of case that matters — the claim form, particulars of claim, defence, and reply — must be verified by a statement of truth under CPR Part 22. A statement of truth is simply a formal confirmation that the person signing honestly believes the facts stated in the document are true. It converts a pleading from an assertion into something closer to sworn testimony about belief. That is precisely why the sanction attached to it has real teeth: signing a statement of truth without an honest belief in the truth of the facts stated can be treated as contempt of court. For a solicitor advising a client on what can and cannot go into a pleading, this is the single most important guardrail in the whole topic — it is the rule that prevents statements of case from becoming a venue for convenient fiction.

After the defence lands, the claimant has an option, not an obligation: a claimant may serve a reply to a defence to respond to matters the defence has newly raised (for example, to engage with a factual account the defence has put forward). Crucially, this is genuinely optional — a claimant who does not file a reply is not taken to admit the matters raised in that defence. The deemed-admission trap that applies to defendants ignoring the particulars of claim has no mirror-image trap for claimants ignoring a defence.

Litigation is rarely a clean two-party fight, and CPR Part 20 is the mechanism for bringing everyone else in. An additional claim is defined, deliberately broadly, as any claim other than the claim by the claimant against the defendant. Three shapes recur constantly in practice:

• A counterclaim — an additional claim brought by a defendant against the claimant, which the defendant may bring together with some other person as well.
• A claim for contribution — against another person who is also liable to the claimant for the same damage, so that liability is shared out fairly.
• A claim for indemnity — against another person from whom the defendant seeks to recover the whole of its own liability to the claimant, rather than merely a share.

Permission from the court is the pivot point that determines how easy each of these is to bring:

No court permission needed when:

• A counterclaim is filed together with the defence.
• A contribution or indemnity claim is made against a person already a party, with the notice filed at the same time as the defence, or — for a party added later — within 28 days after that party files its own defence.

Court permission required when:

• A counterclaim is filed after the defence has already been filed.
• An additional claim is brought against a person who is not already a party to the proceedings at all.

And the chain does not stop at one link: a person against whom an additional claim is made, who was not previously a party, may in turn bring a further additional claim of their own against someone else under Part 20 — contribution and indemnity claims can cascade through a whole web of defendants. To keep this manageable, the court must, so far as practicable, manage the original claim and all additional claims together, rather than letting a single dispute fragment into a set of disconnected mini-trials. And just as with a defence, a counterclaim must be verified by a statement of truth in exactly the same manner.

Pleadings are not set in stone, but CPR Part 17 controls how and when they can move. The permission threshold rises in three clear stages, tied to two triggers — service and consent:

The hardest cases arise once a limitation period has expired. Ordinarily, adding or changing a claim after limitation has run is exactly the kind of prejudice the limitation rules exist to prevent — so CPR 17.4 allows the court to permit such an amendment only in specified, narrow circumstances. The two that matter most for practice are:

• A new claim may be added after expiry of the limitation period only if it arises out of substantially the same facts as a claim already in issue — the defendant was already on notice of the relevant factual territory, even if not of that precise legal label.
• The court may allow an amendment to correct the name of a party after expiry, but only where the mistake was genuine and not one that would cause reasonable doubt as to identity — this rescues a claimant who sued the right entity under a slightly wrong name, but not one who is really trying to sue a different person altogether.

Sometimes a statement of case is unclear rather than wrong, and CPR Part 18 supplies the tool for that: a party may make a request for further information to another party to clarify a matter that is unclear in a statement of case, and that request may seek clarification either of the statement of case itself or of any other matter relevant to the proceedings more broadly. Practice Direction 18 encourages parties to send a written request first, before running to the court — litigation etiquette expects the informal route to be tried before the formal one.

If the response is inadequate, or there is none, the requesting party may apply to the court for an order compelling a proper response. And whatever information is eventually given — whether volunteered or produced by court order — is treated as forming part of the statement of case to which it relates, meaning it becomes binding in exactly the same way the original pleading was. A request for further information is not a side conversation; it becomes woven into the official record of what each party's case actually is.