Claimant personal injury lawyers angry over Jackson review
Furious claimant personal injury (PI) lawyers have accused Lord Justice Jackson of bowing to the defendant insurance lobby with his radical proposals to cut the costs of litigation, which they say will also reduce access to justice.
Jackson’s year-long review of civil costs concluded that success fees and after-the-event insurance (ATE) premiums should no longer be recoverable from losing defendants; that victorious defendants should not be able to recover their costs in PI, clinical negligence and defamation cases (obviating the need for ATE); and that referral fees for PI cases should be scrapped.
He said solicitors should not be able to take more than 25% of a claimant’s damages for their success fee, and that general damages should rise 10% to ensure that claimants are no worse off than now.
Jackson also called for the introduction of fixed fees across the fast track and backed the use of contingency fees, although claimants would only be able to recover their costs in the conventional manner.
Launching the report last week, Jackson said the reforms would lead to solicitors competing ‘not on who can pay the most to a claims management company but on the basis of who can charge the lowest success fee… I believe the reforms which I propose in respect of PI litigation will [benefit] accident victims and also those who pay [insurance] premiums.’
‘The champagne corks will be popping at insurers’ headquarters,’ said Tom Jones, head of policy and public affairs at national trade union firm Thompsons. ‘They have got almost everything they have been lobbying for. Claimants are going to be paying out of their damages and insurers will be paying out to their shareholders.’
John McQuater, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said the reforms offered little for accident victims. Ending recoverability would not save costs, but just shift them to the claimant, he said, and a 10% increase in damages will not compensate.
Dan Cutts, president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, welcomed Jackson’s recognition that PI costs are disproportionate. ‘He has also accepted that defendants have paid a heavy price for the access to justice that conditional fee agreements have provided.’
Law Society president Robert Heslett was pleased that Jackson recommended retaining the small claims limit for PI, adding: ‘We are hopeful… that the proposition to abolish the recovery of success fees from the wrongdoer does not result in less, rather than more, access to justice.’
- See Editorial
Comments
What price access to justice?
Dan Cutts' comment is nonsense. He should bear in mind that the only price defendants pay is one they bring on themselves. If they don't injure others, they don't pay any price. Conversely, if they injure others, they should pay the full price. None of that price should fall on those they have injured, as Lord Justice Jackson now proposes it should.
Jackson's proposals would wreck access to justice
Jackson's arrogance and ego knows no bounds
The breadth of his recommendations is astonishing - abolish the ATE market and therefore CFAs, the indemnity principle, tinker with general damages, introduce contingency fees, abolish referrals fees, make innocent injury victims pay out of their compensation.........
The man is clearly to the right of Gengis Khan, and clearly is upset that ordinary people have the temerity to be able to access the courts to assert their legal rights. This must obviously be stamped out so the ruling classes such as him can enjoy their uninterrupted rights to trample over the lives of others with full immunity.
he must be so proud....kindly pardon me while I retch whilst others fawn on his brilliance
A difficult call. I dont
A difficult call. I dont accept the comments made that Claimants are paying the price for Jackson's reforms. Claimant lawyers may well be but thats surely the point. I regularly see Claimants costs in excess of £20k on a £2000 case (without trial) and something needs to be done. Of course a Claimant needs to be compensated for a tortfeasor's wrongdoing but the only thing on Claimant lawyers minds in costs. I was at Court only a few days ago and a well know North-East firm's lawyer told me that they were having a meeting to work out how best to get their claims out of the current fixed fee system. Lawyers will live on but the parasitic claims managers will not - they will just go in-house.
Really?
Costs of £20K on a £2K claim? Most of the files I see, the paying party won't pay £2K on a £2K claim...
... and lets face it an
... and lets face it an incoming Tory government will do whatever it can to empty the coffers of the unions, and they earn a shedload from referral fees. Thompsons must be running a wee bit scared.
Abolition of Referral Fees
Ho! Ho! Ho! It is hilarious to see Claims Farmers and Claimant lawyers running scared, blaming everyone else but themselves and pointing at other areas of the law that Jackson should have attacked instead of personal injury. Utter nonsense. I worked in the RTA PI field for many years, and started well before the sausage machine type firms became the norm, before referral fees became the norm in the early 90's (yes, before they were formally allowed; shock horror!), before Claims Farmers, Insurance Brokers and Car Bodyshops became greeedier and greedier and before it became the disgustingly dirty industry it has become. Thankfully I am out of it. If the public really knew how much claims farmers, their referrers and indeed Claimant lawyers are able to make out of a straightforward one year prognosis whiplash claim, where, in reality the client is recovered within days of the accident (yes forgot to put the doctors into the mix above - very nice businesses built up by many of them on the back of all of this over the years), then there would be a huge public outcry.
Sorry, the claimant industry has no valid arguments whatsoever. Time has been called on the gravy train and it is to be hoped it's derailment is imminent.