EWJ June 61 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 115
High Court Rejects Split Trial
in Superyacht Negligence Case
In a significant ruling for professional negligence litigators, earlier this year the High Court
refused an application for a split trial in Tatiana Soroka v Payne Hicks Beach, a professional
negligence claim arising from one of the UK’s most high-profile divorce settlements.
Ms Soroka, who was awarded £453 million following
the breakdown of her marriage to oligarch Farkhad
Akhmedov, alleged that her former solicitors, Payne
Hicks Beach, acted negligently in failing to advise her
to pursue enforcement against the £150 million superyacht Luna. She contended that had she been advised correctly she would have enhanced her recovery
under the financial remedy order.
iii. Timing and delay
Master Kaye noted that because the full trial could be
heard by late 2026, and splitting would delay resolution until sometime in 2028, it was not in the interests
of justice.
iv. ADR and settlement
In this case, the judgment confirmed that a split trial
was highly unlikely to enhance the prospects of an
early settlement and more likely to delay the time
parties can consider settlement.
Payne Hicks Beach denied the allegations, arguing
there was:
i. no breach of duty;
ii. no duty of care was owed in the manner claimed;
and
iii. no causative loss.
v. Issues with witness evidence
Master Kaye also held that witnesses already have
limited recollection of the events in 2017. A split trial
would require many witnesses to testify twice, which is
unfair and would lead to "risks inherent in witnesses giving evidence covering the same ground twice". Repeating
evidence after 10 years had the potential to affect
reliability.
Request for a Split Trial Refused
Ms Soroka sought to divide the proceedings into two
phases: first, to resolve issues of breach of duty; and
second, to address causation and loss. Her legal team
argued that a staged approach would streamline litigation and reduce costs. Master Kaye, sitting as a
Deputy High Court Judge, refused the application.
Furthermore, revisiting the same matters could offer
witnesses "a trial run", giving rise to unfairness and
inefficiency. The need for the same experts to attend
trial twice and give overlapping evidence also weighed
against a split.
The following issues were a factor in the judge’s
decision to refuse the application:
vi. Costs
Splitting trials means additional time, and consequently costs. In this case, a cost-saving existed only if
the Claimant lost at trial one, but "no obvious substantial
saving" could be guaranteed. The judge held that this
was not a claim where a resolution of breach and duty
would lead to an obvious immediate window of opportunity to settle.
i. Fuzzy lines
Split trials carry "dangers and unintended consequences"
due to the risk of an apparently bright line between issues being "not so bright or perhaps a little bit fuzzy". If the
issues are not cleanly separated, there is a danger that
some issues might end up falling down a gap between
the two trials.
The starting point is assessing whether there is a
"sufficiently clear bright line between the issues" to justify a
split. Even if possible in principle, the judge must
adopt a common-sense, pragmatic approach to decide
whether a split trial is just and efficient.
vii. Prejudice
Concern was raised that delays from a split trial would
prejudice other court users, as two trials consume
more resources and delay other cases. If different
judges preside over each trial, any fuzziness in the first
trial would cause inevitable complications in the
second.
ii. The dangers of overlap between the trial on
liability and the trial on causation
The judge further asserted that overlap can lead to
unintended consequences, satellite disputes and difficulties. Attempts to narrowly define trial one risked
“either leaving a gap or creating an overlap" across breach,
duty, and causation. There was no obvious means of
avoiding such an overlap; all relevant material is
needed at once to properly assess key issues. The
judge expressed "a real nagging doubt that the clear bright
line was not clear or bright", and was not persuaded by
the proposed split in this matter.
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
The judge also considered that “it also seems to me to represent the right balance in terms of costs and benefit. It seems
to me the reasonable and proportionate approach consistent
with the overriding objective”.
Shortly after judgment was given, Ms Soroka
withdrew her claim.
Practical Implications
This decision is an interesting example of judicial
reasoning around split trials in professional
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JUNE 2025
