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United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Key definition
Personal injury definition What does Personal injury mean? Personal injury describes harm to a person’s body or mind, as opposed to damage to property or pure economic loss. In practice it underpins civil claims in tort/delict, including negligence, occupiers’ liability, employers’ liability, product liability, road traffic accidents and clinical negligence. Across England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland, legislation (notably limitation statutes and, in Ireland, Personal Injuries Assessment Board legislation) commonly defines personal injuries to include disease and any impairment of a person’s physical or mental condition. Recognised heads therefore cover physical injury, industrial disease and psychiatric injury. Fatal injury claims are related but procedurally distinct. Key legal features...
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Surveillance evidence in personal injury claims: CPR disclosure, admissibility, timing, costs (QOCS/Part 36), discontinuance/settlement, contempt, post-judgment appeals, and claimant recordings (England and Wales)
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Practice notes
Overview
Within civil litigation, Defendants in Personal injury matters most often rely on surveillance material. Its purpose is to expose any gap between the Claimant’s asserted impairments following the Index accident and reality. The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) contain no standalone rules for such material; a recording is treated as a document, so CPR 31 applies. There are three particular features of surveillance evidence that prompt specific considerations:
- surprise—its value lies in capturing the claimant carrying out activities when they have no expectation of being observed by, or for, the defendant; advance warning must accordingly be avoided
- secrecy—it is likewise crucial the claimant is not made aware that they are being watched; however, there are bounds to how far a defendant ought to go to obtain such material
- timing—its forensic force is in weakening the claimant’s case, so the defendant will want the claimant to commit to their factual position before revealing the surveillance; disclosure must not be delayed so long that it amounts to ambushing the claimant
The distinctive nature of surveillance evidence gives rise to...
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Web page updated on 21/05/2026
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