The claimant sought to receive money out of insurance funds fed by contributions from all employers, insured persons and the Exchequer. The procedure for determining whether the claimant is entitled to a disability benefit was said to be more like an inquest than an action.
Diplock J said: ‘A claim by an insured person to benefit under the Act is not truly analogous to a lis inter partes. A claim to benefit is a claim to receive money out of the insurance funds . . Any such claim requires investigation to determine whether any, and if so, what amount of benefit is payable out of the fund. In such an investigation, the minister or the insurance officer is not a party adverse to the claimant. If analogy be sought in the other branches of the law, it is to be found in an inquest rather than in an action.’
Diplock J
[1958] 2 QB 228, [1958] 2 All ER 374
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Kerr v Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland) HL 6-May-2004
Wrongful Refusal of Benefits
The claimant was estranged from his family, but claimed re-imbursement of the expenses for his brother’s funeral. The respondent required him to establish that none of his siblings was in a better position than he to pay for the funeral, but he had . .
Cited – Novitskaya v London Borough of Brent and Another CA 1-Dec-2009
Novitskaya_brentCA2009
The claimant appealed refusal of her claim for arrears of housing benefit.
Held: The appeal was allowed. The claim had been defective in having been made informally, but ‘the distribution of benefits is different from many other areas of civil . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 17 September 2021; Ref: scu.196893
