A father who spent more than three years telling his motor insurer he owned the car his son used to kill two people has been blocked from changing his story, after a High Court master found the reversal would be wholly contrary to the administration of justice.
The decision was handed down on September 16, 2026, refusing applications by a convicted drug-driver and his father to rewrite their defences in a claim worth more than seven figures.
The case, UK Insurance Ltd v TXL & RXS, is a recovery action - the insurer paid out on the fatal accident claims and is now pursuing the driver and his father to get the money back under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Both men wanted to amend their court filings to tell a fundamentally different story about who owned the car and who gave permission to drive it. The master said no.
The facts are as grim as they come. In the summer of 2022, a family was walking along a pavement in Ramsgate during a seaside break. TXL, driving an Alfa Romeo while under the influence of drugs, mounted the pavement and struck them. A pregnant woman and her father were killed. Three other family members, including two young children, were injured.
TXL initially fled the scene and called his father, RXS, for help. What followed led to charges of perverting the course of justice against TXL, RXS and RXS's wife: TXL returned to the crash scene with his parents, and his parents removed cocaine and TXL's mobile phone from the wrecked vehicle - while the pregnant woman still lay dying beneath it. They then went home and cleaned TXL's bedroom of other drug evidence. The criminal trial judge described the act as "callous."
TXL was convicted of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and two counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment. His parents were sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.
The insurance picture was complicated from the start. TXL was not a named driver on his father's policy with UK Insurance Ltd (UKIL) for the Alfa Romeo. He had his own separate policy with Haven Insurance on a different vehicle - a Hyundai - which included cover to drive other cars with the owner's consent.
Haven voided TXL's policy from inception, citing undisclosed motoring convictions. Haven also argued its cover would not have applied in any event, because TXL was using the Alfa to courier drugs at the time of the crash - a purpose excluded under the policy terms. The criminal trial judge had found TXL was driving in order to commit the offence of supplying Class A drugs.
That left a question motor insurers and claims teams will recognise: when more than one insurer might be on the hook, who actually pays? The judgment sets out what is known in the industry as the liability "tree" - a hierarchy that determines which insurer is responsible based on the facts of the insurance position.
At the top sits the contractual insurer - the one with a valid policy covering the driver or vehicle. Below that, insurers caught by section 148 of the Road Traffic Act. Then section 151 insurers - those who issued a policy covering the vehicle but withdrew cover after the accident, yet still carry a statutory obligation to compensate innocent victims regardless. Below them, Article 75 insurers acting as agents of the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB). At the bottom, the MIB itself, funded by a portion of every motor premium in the country, as the last-resort safety net.
UKIL and Haven disputed between themselves which of them should pay. That dispute was listed for a preliminary trial in July 2024 but was settled on confidential terms shortly before the hearing. Under the compromise, UKIL accepted it would satisfy the judgments as the section 151 insurer - the insurer that had covered the Alfa.
With the victims' claims being settled through court-approved hearings - the first alone was for £525,000 plus costs - UKIL turned to recovery. In March 2025, it issued what is known as a Part 20 claim (essentially a claim-within-a-claim) against both TXL and RXS, seeking to recoup its outlay under section 151(8) of the Act. That provision allows an insurer that has been forced to pay out on a voided or cancelled policy to recover the money from the person who caused the liability, or from anyone insured under the policy who caused or permitted the vehicle's use.
RXS's original defence, filed in April 2025 and backed by a statement of truth - a formal declaration that what is written in a court document is believed to be true - was straightforward. TXL had been driving a vehicle "registered in my name and insured under my policy," RXS stated. He said he had given his son permission to use the car, believing he was going to the shops. He described lending the vehicle "out of trust as any parent might do."
That account was consistent with everything RXS had told UKIL over the preceding three years - in phone calls when reporting the accident in August 2022, in a detailed conversation with UKIL's lawyers in March 2023, and again in February 2025. On each occasion, RXS confirmed he owned the Alfa and had given TXL permission to drive it.
Then UKIL applied for summary judgment - a procedure asking the court to decide the case without a full trial, on the basis there was no real defence to answer. Within months, RXS's position shifted entirely. In a draft amended defence filed in November 2025, he claimed it was "incorrect" that he owned the Alfa or gave permission for TXL to drive it. He expressed "regret" that his earlier defence was not "wholly truthful." He now said the car belonged to TXL's wife, who was overseas at the time of the accident, and that he had merely insured it as an administrative favour because it was parked uninsured on a public road.
TXL, from prison, filed his own application to amend, broadly supporting his father's new version. He too had shifted positions over the years - telling police after the accident that the car belonged to his wife, then telling UKIL's lawyers in April 2023 that his father had bought it, and now reverting to the wife-ownership account. Three different versions.
The master worked methodically through the legal tests for withdrawing formal admissions - statements made in court documents that a party later wants to take back - and for amending the defences themselves.
On the grounds for withdrawal, RXS's counsel argued a father should not be forced to continue litigating on the basis of a defence he now says was false, with potential exposure running into millions of pounds. The punishment for making a false statement, counsel argued, should be proportionate - and refusing the amendment would be "arbitrary, oppressive and inappropriate."
UKIL pushed back hard. Its counsel described the application as "an opportunistic abuse of process" and "a flagrant affront to the Court," arguing this was not a case of an accidental error but a "whole web of deceit" maintained deliberately over years.
The master agreed with UKIL on the key points. On new evidence, there was nothing meeting the threshold. The WhatsApp messages TXL had recently produced between himself and his wife were "incomplete and inconclusive." The witness statements supporting the new ownership claim had all been produced after UKIL's summary judgment application, which the master said "impacts their reliability." On conduct, there was "nothing to aid RXS." On prejudice, the damage to UKIL went beyond what a costs order could fix: allowing the withdrawal would "strike at the heart of the efficient administration of justice."
On timing, RXS had maintained what he now called a false account for more than three years and only sought to change it after the summary judgment application landed. The master noted this was not a case of a "careful re-appraisal of evidence" by professional advisers who had spotted a mistake - it was "a now-admitted deliberate falsified account provided in the original pleading."
As for RXS's argument that he was a loving parent who simply got in too deep with a lie, the master was blunt: "The Court system would collapse under the weight of amendment applications if such laxity was permissible."
Both defendants also ran legal arguments aimed at breaking UKIL's right of recovery. TXL relied on a Scottish decision to argue UKIL had paid the claims voluntarily and could not use the recovery provision to recoup from his family. The master found the case offered no help, because the statutory exemption it relied on had since been removed.
RXS argued that since UKIL had cancelled his policy after the accident, he was no longer "insured by the policy" and therefore could not be pursued. The master noted that section 152 of the Road Traffic Act is explicit on this point: only cancellation before the accident can trigger that exemption. The cancellation came afterwards, so it simply moved UKIL down the liability tree from contractual insurer to section 151 insurer - it did not remove the right of recovery.
The master refused all applications to withdraw admissions and all factual amendments. A separate category of purely legal amendments - which would have put existing arguments into more precise wording without changing the substance of the defence - were not formally determined. The master indicated these could be revisited at the summary judgment hearing, and noted UKIL had agreed to provide further information about the respective contributions to the settlement between itself and Haven.
UKIL's summary judgment application, which had been stayed pending the outcome, will now proceed to a future hearing.
In closing, the master reached for a metaphor. The defendants, the master said, were like railway passengers who had boarded a train, ignored the printed conditions of travel, and committed "misdemeanours along the way" - and were now asking the network to force the entire train into reverse through years of junctions. Not because of a minor scheduling error, but because they had decided they should have been on a different train altogether. That, the master concluded, "could not be said to accord with the Overriding Objective of the Court."
For motor claims teams and recovery specialists working the liability tree, the decision is a pointed reminder: admissions backed by statements of truth are not easily undone, and years of consistent representations to an insurer will carry serious weight when the story suddenly changes after a summary judgment application arrives.
The decision was handed down on September 16, 2026, in the High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division. UKIL's summary judgment application against TXL and RXS is listed for a future date.
