Referral proposals ‘won’t work’
The government must abandon its current proposals to ban referral fees in personal injury cases and start again from scratch, Chancery Lane has urged.
Writing in the Gazette today, Law Society policy chief Mark Stobbs says the relevant amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) will have ‘unintended consequences’ and should be ditched.
The government’s real problem with referral fees is not ethical, but that it thinks they encourage frivolous claims, says Stobbs. LASPO’s agenda is to cut the number of claims, he adds, but this ‘won’t work’ because the major claims-handlers and insurers will enter into alternative business structure arrangements with law firms and ‘internalise’ the referral fees that they are currently receiving.
Meanwhile, Stobbs adds, firms that currently pay referral fees will not be able to compete, resulting in less client choice.
Comments
What?
Does Stobbs think that referral fees increase client choice? The very fact that referral fees exist demonstrates that "client choice" does not feature highly on either the payer's or the payee's agenda.
Presumably the government
Presumably the government believes frivolous actions to be unethical-in other words it is entirely about ethics.
Possibly this man should go on an ethics refresher course. How much do we pay him for such non sense?
Could you tell me what a
Could you tell me what a 'frivolous' action is?
One that neither has right on
One that neither has right on its side nor prospect of success-but which makes fees for the firm pursuing it.
"No win no fee" means cases
"No win no fee" means cases with no prospect of success do not make fees for any firm pursing them
Exactly. It is for this
Exactly. It is for this reason that 'frivolous' actions are already self-limiting.
No point in informing the public though, the headlines aren't exciting and they might just realise that proposed changes will do little more than hand the insurers/corporations a nice little windfall at the expense of those in genuine need.
No, no case is ever settled
No, no case is ever settled because it is easier and cheaper to do so.
Surely cheaper, if it is a
Surely cheaper, if it is a frivilous case, to defend it then not to have to pay any costs or compensation to the claimant, and have defence costs paid? If someone chooses not to pursue what they consider to be a good case because it is "easier" not to do so, then they can hardly complain.
You may jest, but you're
You may jest, but you're absolutely right!
Insurers often spin about having to compromise cases on the basis of 'economics' but it's only economic in the sense that they know that if they carry on they will have a very good chance of losing i.e that is to say that their policy holder was responsible for negligently cause injury and unnecessary suffering to someone else.
Insurers are well resourced and will often fight losing battles which settle at, or close to, Trial.
Contrast the resources of insurers/businesses with that of Claimant and their lawyers and you'll understand exactly where the power lies.
Compromise
I think the point regarding insurers compromising claims alleged as being 'frivolous' (I think we're talking low value, low speed, soft tissue injuries) is that they do so not because the claims are frivolous, to give the word its every day meaning; rather they are compromised because the balance of power in terms of evidential burden is so heavily weighted in the claimant's favour.
Armed with a GP's report which more often than not simply records what the claimant tells their GP (without recourse to the claimant's medical records in most cases), an insurer is faced with two options: instruct its own expert or seek to compromise the claim. It is not accurate to say that because an insurer opts for the latter that the claim is categorically genuine and beyond reproach by implication, rather it is extremely difficult to gainsay a claimant who says they were injured because of the lack of objective evidence available. It matters not that an insurer is considerably more well resourced than a claimant. One cannot look at each claim in isolation in order to get a picture of the balance of power at play, one has to look at the total number of claims made against insurers.