FOIL president: cut claimant lawyer fees
Claimant personal injury lawyers’ fees should be cut by extending the new road traffic accident (RTA) claims process, and by allowing insurance companies to undertake ‘third-party capture’, the new president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL) told the Gazette this week.
Tim Oliver, senior partner at London and Leeds firm Plexus Law, said there is ‘no evidence’ that a claimant will not get the correct compensation if they settle directly with an insurer through one of its panel law firms. He said that ‘the only loser is the claimant solicitor, and I don’t think anyone will be crying over that’.
Oliver said defendant lawyers believed the new RTA personal injury claims process, intended to speed up and reduce the cost of claims valued between £1,000 and £10,000, should be extended to non-RTA claims, as proposed by the government. The process was introduced at the behest of the Ministry of Justice in April to handle an estimated 500,000 claims per year.
He said that claimant legal costs are ‘too high’, and that the expansion of the process for low-value claims would lead to a ‘big drop’.
‘The process is working very well at the moment; the portal is well set up,’ he said.
Oliver also cast doubt on claimant lawyer assertions that insurers are ‘abusing’ the RTA process. ‘It’s absolutely not true,’ he said. ‘The insurers have a very tight timescale in which to respond.’
Oliver suggested that employers’ liability and public liability claims would be the easiest to adapt to fit a similar process for low-value claims.
On the prospect of insurance companies owning their own law firms once alternative business structures are available next October, Oliver said that he would be ‘surprised’ if insurers had not considered this, but said he does not know of any concrete plans. ‘They are big purchasers of legal services, and they could reduce that spend by owning a law firm,’ he said.
Comments
Self interest or complete foolishness?
Having already allowed insurers to pay them paltry hourly rates in order to keep the work, Defendant lawyers now seem hell bent on reducing the work available to them. Is the desire to please their paymasters now so ingrained that they no longer notice that they are doing themselves out of their own jobs?
Are they perhaps hoping that insurers will pay them large sums of money for their firms? They made that mistake with estate agencies and aren't about to do it again. It must be bad enough contracting with the insurers - being directly employed by them would be even worse.
Funny that
Only this morning I sent an RTA file to our costs draftsman.
The insurer was incredibly aggressive, knocking on the client's door and phoning her in an evening all week following the accident offering her £2000. The general gist was "Take it now as this is the most we will offer!"
Needless to say, three years down the line, the case settled for £60,000.00.
I've another one going to trial in the New Year. £1500 offered at the client's front door. Liability is not in issue and the Schedule (which is well supported and by no means exaggerated) is at £100,000. Their best offer so far? £8,000.
I stopped listening to FOIL some time ago. Hopefully, the powers that be have done the same.
RTA Defendant Lawyers
The insurers almost certainly do abuse the RTA Portal process by deliberately stalling the process stating that "article 75 decision pending" on many newly submitted claims, this gives them 30 days to mess about instead of 15.
On the subject of Defendant insurer appointed panel firms, they enjoy a comfortable existence whereby win, lose or draw, they have the indulgence of their insurer client to fall back on for payment of their costs. I see far too many litigated claims (which have become litigated due to ridiculous backlogs preventing the insurers from dealing in a timely fashion or wholly unreaslistic offers on quantum due to case valuation software). These litigated claims often need "nipping in the bud" but seem to be unnecessarily padded out for many months by the Defendant lawyers in the interests of building costs. If any savings on damages are achieved, these are more than overshaddowed by the increased costs of each party. Jobs for the boys.
Proof is in the pudding
They constantly whinge about the level of costs. Don't they realise that costs are generally conduct based anyway?
In the last 5 years I've had 6 cases go to detailed assessment where the Defendant claimed our costs were excessive and we've won all 6.
Generally costs do look high when compared to the damages (which by the way are pitiful, but that's another story). There is an answer if they think about it: Why don't they make a decent Part 36 early on to cover themselves?
Re: Driving Down Costs
It's rather obvious but bears repeating - the only reason Insurers and their Legal Representatives should want costs reduced is because it serves the (powerful) Insurance lobby which exists in the UK. If there really is no evidence that a Claimant will not get the right compensation then why on earth are so may cases taken to court, won and compensation paid to Claimants ? Spare me from the likes of Tim Oliver whose comments are as offensive to Claimant Lawyers as they are nauseating.
FOIL Propaganda
What a load of rubbish this person Tim Oliver speaks. Does he know the law. There isn't a single authority in the CPR, case law or anywhere else that requires a loosing party in litigation to pay unreasonable or disproprortionate costs. This is just Defendant insurer propaganda aimed at trying to keep Jackson's erroneous conclusions alive.
FOIL's flannel
I've lost count of the number of liability admitted/agreed cases on which I've had to issue proceedings solely because I can't get a response from insurers when my client's medical evidence and schedule have been disclosed and all I'm waiting for is an offer.
Insurers (and their apparatchiks) should remember the old saying about what people who live in glass houses shouldn't do!
FOIL
I think FOIL looks best wrapped round a Turkey after Christmas Dinner in anticipation of sandwiches on Boxing day.
Apart from that there seems little point to it.
Yet more drivel from the insurers mouth piece
They don't like us because we bring equality between the parties and prevent them from exploiting injured persons.
Most of the time when I take on a case where the client has been speaking directly with the insurer, the medical report has been very basic and incredibly Defendant biased. It is the norm to increase damages twice, three or four times over. On occasions it has been much higher.
None of their comments surprise me any more.
We have fixed fees for RTAs now, have had since 2003. Yet, we are still waiting for those premiums to go down.
How interesting that not a
How interesting that not a single post supports FOIL's nonsense...