McBride v UK Insurance [2017]: What It Settled
McBride v UK Insurance resolved the two hardest applications of the basic hire rate method: what to do when the credit hire came with a nil excess but the comparator quotes all carry an excess, and how the method works for prestige vehicles with thin hire markets. The court held the comparison is adjusted, not abandoned.
§ 01What was the case about?
Two conjoined appeals (McBride, and Clayton v EUI) involving credit hire of higher-value vehicles supplied with a nil excess — the hirer bearing no liability for damage to the hire car. The defendants' basic hire rate evidence comprised mainstream quotes that all carried an excess, reducible only partly by paying an excess-waiver charge. The question was whether such quotes could stand as comparators under Stevens, and if so with what adjustment — plus wider argument about how prestige vehicles fit the BHR method at all.
§ 02What did the court decide?
Flaux LJ's judgment held the Stevens method applies, with pragmatic adjustment. A nil excess is a genuine benefit whose cost can be assessed: where comparators offer only hire-with-excess, the court can adjust using the available evidence — such as the cost of excess-elimination products — rather than reject the comparators or default to the credit hire rate. For prestige vehicles, the court confirmed the BHR exercise is still performed on the best available comparator evidence; difficulty of comparison is not a route to automatic recovery of the full credit rate. The judgment also tidied a perceived tension between Stevens and the earlier Bent litigation in the defendants' favour on method.
§ 03What did it change in practice?
It closed the two loopholes most argued after Stevens. Nil-excess hire no longer defeats defendants' rates evidence — adjustment figures are now a standard schedule item — and prestige claims are argued within the BHR framework rather than outside it, with the evidential quality of comparators doing the work.
§ 04Which later cases applied it?
McBride is the standard citation alongside Stevens in any rates dispute involving excess terms or higher-value vehicles, applied continually at county court level; the procedural authorities Irving (2018) and Diriye (2020) complete the modern framework on the impecuniosity side.
§ 05Related reading on this site
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