An appeal by the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust which aimed to reduce fraudulent claims to a victim compensation scheme was dismissed today by three appeal judges.
As part of today’s ruling by the Court of Appeal, a controversial scheme to compensate sex abuse victims of the television presenter Jimmy Savile, was given the go-ahead.
The ruling is likely to pave the way for scores of victims to pursue claims against Savile's estate. The estate was worth an estimated £4m at the time of his death but has since reduced to £3.3m following legal fees and other costs.
Much of the estate was left to Savile’s charity, the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust. But following the BBC’s expose of the star’s sex abuse crimes in 2012, the estate received numerous claims for compensation from abuse victims.
The Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust argued that the compensation scheme would not be able to weed out fake claims and that it lacked a "process of evaluation".
Robert Ham QC, for the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust, told appeal judges: “It describes itself as a scheme to provide compensation. It doesn’t describe itself as a scheme to scrutinise and assess claims.
“As a matter of common sense these sort of situations are likely to attract numbers of fraudulent claims. One certainly cannot proceed on the basis that the claims are valid – or even presumptively valid.”
The Trust was also critical of the amount it claimed would end up being paid to the victim’s lawyers.
But the challenge was today dismissed by the Court of Appeal.
The court also rejected the Trust's application for NatWest bank to be dismissed as the executor of Savile's estate.
A spokeswoman for trustees of the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust said:
"The trustees continue to have concerns about the scheme. It does not seem right that claimants’ lawyers will get, in many cases, more than ten times the amount going to claimants. However it seems the Court of Appeal, whilst commenting that the scheme is expensive, decided that a flawed scheme was better than no scheme at all."
The trust also expressed delight over the Court of Appeal's decision to overturn High Court costs against the Trust.
"The trustees are delighted the Court of Appeal has overturned the High Court costs order against the Trust," the spokeswoman said.
"The Court of Appeal confirmed there was no legal basis for making the Trust liable for the cost of NatWest’s application to approve the scheme."
