My firm, Coyne Learmonth, is a firm of solicitors practising in Crosby near Liverpool. We deal only with road traffic accident (RTA) claims and specialise in credit hire claims arising out of such accidents.

I am not in a position to comment on any aspect of Lord Jackson’s report that does not deal with RTA litigation. Moreover, I ought to make it clear at the outset that I have no great objection to fixed costs for claimant work in RTA litigation, provided those fixed costs are reasonable at the outset and are regularly reviewed.

We do already have fixed costs pre-issue and fixed costs for the trial. The bit in the middle is not so complicated as to be unamenable to sectionalised fixed costs – issue to allocation, allocation to listing and listing to trial.

That said, I fear that much of Lord Justice Jackson’s report and his recommendations are the result of succumbing to an orchestrated and seductive campaign on the part of the defence insurance industry. If anyone is in any doubt about that, one need only to look at chapter 17, where the report says that if the entire package of proposed reforms were introduced there would be five consequences. One is set out at paragraph 2.12: ‘Costs payable to claimant solicitors by liability insurers will be significantly reduced because those costs will no longer include success fees or after-the-event (ATE) insurance premiums. This will inure to the benefit of motorists and all others who pay premiums to liability insurers.’

Defendants have propagated three myths. The first is that there is a compensation culture. Despite a government committee investigating that assertion and roundly dismissing it, the media and, regrettably, some members of the judiciary remain spellbound by the spin of defendant insurers. The second myth is that claimant costs that defendants have to pay are disproportionate and the fault of claimant solicitors, who rush to issue proceedings in order to build up costs rather than settling cases pre-issue; and that having to pay the claimant’s success fee is unfair.

We’ll come to the third myth later.

Jackson’s conclusion is that claimant costs payable by defendants are ‘disproportionate’. It’s clear that Jackson wants to avoid a repeat of the sort of thing he describes in chapter 4 at paragraph 38 – namely the costs war, in which a vast mass of litigation about costs represents (and I am sure no one would disagree) ‘a shocking waste of resources’. It will be recalled that technical defences were being made in order to defeat claimant solicitors' claims for costs, despite the fact that they had done the work which resulted in a successful outcome for the claimant.

Doesn’t anyone remember who was responsible for that ‘shocking waste of resources’?

Defendant insurers are also largely responsible for ‘disproportionate’ costs and an equally ‘shocking waste of resources’ in RTA cases.

The three main areas of the report affecting RTA cases pertain to referral fees, ATE premiums and success fees. It’s worth looking at these in turn.

Referral FeesThe assertion is that referral fees add to the costs of litigation. They certainly do for the claimant solicitors who pay them but, it’s submitted, they don’t add anything to the costs that defendants have to pay.

There is a degree of concern among claimant solicitors at the amount of some referral fees. Figures of £900 are quoted. The first point to note in this regard, and which is not mentioned anywhere in Jackson’s report, is that referral fees have escalated at an astonishing rate ever since it was announced that there was to be a Ministry of Justice review of road traffic claims and that there was to be a review of civil litigation costs generally. Claimant solicitors feared, as it turned out justifiably, that both of these reviews would result in recommendations and/or decisions that claimant solicitors’ base costs would be significantly reduced. There was undoubtedly a degree of panic among claimant solicitors, who have rushed to get in as many cases as possible prior to any decision being made, which might reduce their base costs. The consequence of this was an inevitable driving up of referral fees. Clearly those solicitors who pay £900 for an RTA case are losing huge amounts of money if their cases settle before issue.

Are referral fees a problem for third-party insurers?

On the 6 October 2003, fixed recoverable costs (predictive costs) were introduced for road traffic accidents where the value of damages do not exceed £10,000. The formula is well known: £800 base fee plus 20% of the first £5,000 and 15% for the next £5,000. The fee band therefore is between £1,000 and £2,550, excluding success fee and VAT.

These fees were arrived at following an analysis of the work involved from opening a file to the point where proceedings might need to be issued. The calculation was arrived at by taking into account all the necessary work, but recognising that some cases would settle shortly after the file was opened and others would be settled on the cusp of proceedings.

Critically for the purpose of this article, referral fees formed no part of the consideration of expenses incurred by a solicitor in delivering the service. This is because referral fees were not legally payable until March 2004.

In cases where proceedings are issued, costs are determined by reference to the amount of work done and whether it was reasonable to do that work. The cost is subject to a guideline hourly rate fixed by reference to solicitors’ expenses, which could vary depending on which part of the country the solicitor practises in; all of which is susceptible to reduction by judicial assessment. These guideline hourly rates are payable to claimant and defendant solicitors alike, and are payable irrespective of the type of retainer entered into with the client.

Predictive costs and guideline hourly rates both ignore the effect of referral fees on solicitors’ overheads and therefore form no part of recoverable costs.

Under the Solicitors Code of Conduct 2007, and in particular rule 9, a claimant solicitor who pays a referral fee is obliged, as Jackson points out in chapter 20 of his report at paragraph 1.7, to notify the claimant that a referral fee is being paid by the solicitor. What Jackson does not mention in that paragraph is that, additionally, the solicitor must explain to the client in writing that the referral fee is not payable by the client, nor will the solicitor seek to recover the referral fee from anybody else (that is, the unsuccessful defendant and his insurer).

It is therefore illogical to assert that referral fees have driven up the costs of claimant solicitors’ fees as far as unsuccessful defendants and their insurers are concerned. What then is the problem for defendants and their insurers? They are not being asked to pay the referral fees.

The problem is for claimant solicitors, who have to find savings in their business model which non-referral-fee-paying solicitors don’t, in order to be able to pay that additional irrecoverable overhead that is the referral fee. It’s for that reason claimant solicitors at the Birmingham seminar made comments to the effect that referral fees were one way of achieving access to justice but at huge costs, and another claimant solicitor complained that costs were being driven up because colleagues were paying ever higher referral fees (see chapter 20, paragraph 2.3 of the Jackson report).

Referral fees are a problem for the claimant solicitors who pay them and nobody else.

ATE PremiumsJackson recommends the banning of the recoverability of ATE premiums and substituting them for one-way costs shifting. This has its attractions, particularly for defendants; however, it is unsatisfactory from the claimant’s point of view.

What happens to claimant’s disbursements in cases which, for whatever reason, are not successful? These could be significant. For example, late disclosure by defendants of information they should have disclosed pre-issue in accordance with the pre-action protocol – a very regular occurrence – often leads to cases being abandoned. There can be substantial court fees, medical report fees and engineer’s fees which would not have been incurred had timely disclosure been made. Judges appear to have little sympathy with claimants in that sort of position. Jackson’s solution is that claimant solicitors should pick up the tab. Why? If the base costs that he recommends both pre- and post-issue are to be introduced, together with substantially reduced success fees, even the most efficiently run practices are going to have difficulty absorbing that additional burden.

It seems ATE providers are unlikely to offer much reduced cover than that which is presently available. It’s apparently economically unviable.

Success feesRecoverability of the success fee from the unsuccessful party was introduced by the government to ensure that claimants were fully compensated and were not required to pay anything in order to recover compensation from the person responsible for causing their loss.

Jackson says that recoverability makes the costs that defendants have to pay disproportionate. He has devoted an entire chapter in his report to this issue. I think, with respect to Lord Justice Jackson, this has been over-complicated. The practice direction 44.11.5 says: ‘In deciding whether the costs claimed are reasonable and (on a standard basis) proportionate, the court will consider the amount of any additional liability separately from the base costs.’

This means that base costs have to be proportionate and, once determined, the court will move to the issue of the success fee to decide whether that is also proportionate.

In the case of RTA litigation, the government has decided that a proportionate success fee for cases which are settled without a final hearing would be 12.5%, and that a reasonable and proportionate success fee for a case which is disposed of by judicial resolution would be 100%. There can be no argument therefore that the success fee element is disproportionate. There is no provision in the rules that confers any jurisdiction nor indeed any discretion to reduce those success fees.

It’s submitted that it follows that, when you add base costs which have been determined to be proportionate to the statutory proportionate success fees in RTA cases, that combination cannot ever be regarded as disproportionate.

I pray in aid practice direction 44.11.9 which reads: ‘A percentage increase will not be reduced simply on the ground that, when added to base costs which are reasonable and (where relevant) proportionate, the total appears disproportionate.’

The present system of recovery is both proportionate and consistent with putting a claimant in the same position he would be but for the tortfeasor’s negligence.

Why is it proportionate for a claimant to pay anything at all if the claimant solicitor's work has been assessed as reasonably and necessarily incurred, or falls to be paid under the predictive costs scheme?

Jackson’s proposal is that the success fee should be paid by the client. In order that the claimant shouldn’t suffer, he proposes that the damages should be increased by 10%. This would, according to the advice that he has received, result in the claimant not losing out and the claimant would in some cases be better off, provided the success fee is capped at 25% of damages.

Jackson’s proposals have been made without reference to the MoJ proposals for RTA work. The fixed fees that he proposes for pre-issue cases have, as far as I can tell, been prepared on the basis that they would include RTA cases. Clearly that element of his work may be superceded by the MoJ, but I invite you to do the maths. I have. If you apply the proposed fixed fees pre-issue to RTA cases, and compare it with the current predictive costs system, you will find that although the defendant may be paying lower costs, his overall outlay in terms of costs and damages is increased. The surprising conclusion, therefore, is that the alleged disproportionate cost payable by defendants is cured by making the defendants pay a larger sum of money overall!

What about the 100% success fee?The 100% success fee is paid in RTA cases when the case is finally resolved at court.

According to Jackson’s report, and in particular chapter 2, paragraphs 3.1 and 3.3, the data under review demonstrate that 0.2% – yes, that’s right, 0.2% – of cases attracted the 100% success fee. So what’s the problem?

In my own practice, the percentage of cases resolved at a final hearing by the court is rather higher than that, but I have no reason to think that the cases identified in Jackson’s report as requiring a judicial resolution are very different from the cases of mine that go to a final hearing.

Of the cases in my firm that go to a final hearing, about 95% are disposals. Liability is not in issue. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases which are resolved at a final hearing, the insurance company ends up paying a 100% success fee because they are either unwilling to make a sensible offer, or incapable of properly valuing the claim. Either way it’s incompetence. That incompetence results not only in the insurer having to pay a 100% success fee but also in significantly higher base costs, which have had to be incurred in getting the case to a final disposal. As I said at the outset, the defendant insurer costs problem is largely of their own making.

Let me explain.

Provided a defendant insurer acknowledges a letter of claim within 21 days, it can take three months to investigate the claim, hold the claimant at bay and keep the legal costs to the minimum predictive costs payable if the case is settled within the protocol period. In my firm’s experience, defendant insurers rarely acknowledge letters of claim within the requisite time scale. This immediately makes them vulnerable to an early issue of proceedings and thereby increased costs.

Defendant insurers commonly under-resource their claims departments. My fee-earners regularly experience delay on the part of defendants in answering telephone calls. We test response times periodically in my office. There are often times when one can be kept hanging on the phone for more than 30 minutes waiting for it to be answered by a defendant insurer claims department. Yet if you ring the number for policyholders, or for policyholders to make a claim, or if you want to take out a policy, the phone is answered without delay. Dealing with claimants is not a priority.

In credit hire cases where the claimant has a comprehensive insurance policy, defendants routinely say they are not prepared to make a payment and that the claimant should make a claim under his own comprehensive insurance policy. That response demonstrates ignorance of the law. When challenged, defendant insurance file handlers haven’t got a clue what we’re talking about. Whenever we ask to speak to the file handler’s team leader or line manager, and ask them for an explanation for the response, they don’t have one, other than to say 'that’s what we’re told to say'.

The basic law relating to compensation and mitigation is widely misunderstood by defendants. Take the case of a self-employed taxi driver, for example. Defendants will frequently argue that they are not going to pay hire charges and that the taxi driver should mitigate his losses by keeping his claim to a minimum and making a loss of income claim which would be cheaper than credit hire charges. It may be cheaper, but what utter nonsense. The principle of mitigation simply requires the claimant to act reasonably in the particular circumstances. Why is it reasonable for a self-employed taxi driver to give up his job, lose his contacts, and be deprived of any income? Why is it unreasonable for a self-employed taxi driver, whose vehicle has been damaged while parked and unoccupied, to assume that the person responsible will compensate him fully, including the cost of hiring a replacement vehicle to enable him to carry on working as before?

Insurers simply don’t realise that mitigation is not about achieving the cheapest possible result for defendants. Unfortunately, there are some district judges who don’t understand the point either.

Another linked and major issue is very high credit hire charges when the claimant’s own vehicle is of low value. Such cases result in unnecessary waste of resources.

Take the example of a parked and unoccupied hackney cab. Let’s say it has a value of £1,000. The impecunious client reasonably enters into a credit hire agreement. The defendant refuses to make any payment because the claimant has a comprehensive policy. The defendant further refuses to make any payment because they say he should limit his claim to loss of earnings.

The position is indefensible from a legal point of view. The claimant hires a replacement taxi at £130 plus VAT per day (for those unfamiliar with credit hire, this is not a wildly exaggerated figure by any means. The market rate for hackney cabs on credit is anywhere between £110 and £175 per day).

Let us assume for a moment that on top of their mistaken view of the law, they have been slow in responding to the case. Let’s assume proceedings have had to be issued and we get to trial/disposal nine months after the accident. There will be 252 days hire, which at £130.00 per day plus VAT amounts to £38,493.

A defendant pitches up at court and says that the credit hire charges are disproportionate to the value of his £1,000 motor car. Proportionality has absolutely nothing to do with damages. It is a concept related only to costs. Regrettably I have heard district judges agree that proportionality in such cases is an appropriate consideration. It is often argued by defendants who receive some sympathy from inexperienced members of the judiciary that the appropriate course of action when assessing claims such as this is to ask of oneself: ‘would any person of the claimants admittedly impecunious means enter into a contract for which he was going to be liable to pay in excess of £38,000.00?’

That is completely the wrong approach. It is not a legally sustainable argument. The issue is whether or not it was reasonable for the claimant to enter into the credit hire agreement when he did. The claimant understands that he is liable for those charges, but he expects the defendant to have to pay them. If a court decides that either the claimant didn’t need to hire a replacement vehicle or was not entitled to credit hire rates because he wasn’t impecunious and is therefore limited to spot rates, any shortfall in the hire agreement is a matter between the claimant and the hire company. The defendant is never going to be ordered to pay more than that for which he is liable.

It follows that if the hire charges have been increased solely by reason of the defendant’s ignorance of the law and/or failure to deal with the claim efficiently, then they can safely be left to pay the hire charges in full. Upon what basis is the cost of the defendant’s ignorance and delay to be visited upon the claimant?

I pause there to comment that Jackson’s recommendation that there should be docketing of cases (that is, allocating them for the lifetime of the case to judges who understand the issues involved) is an excellent idea. These sorts of issues could be resolved by robust case management at a directions hearing.

When we tell defendant insurers that we are about to issue proceedings, they rarely ask to be joined as second defendant (despite having a clear locus standi), or to nominate solicitors, or ask for a copy of the proceedings. The result is that proceedings are issued and served upon their insured, who typically doesn’t respond, and a default judgment is entered. That puts the insurance company on the back foot. They have at the very least to make an application to set aside that judgment and thereby incur the inevitable adverse costs order in setting aside a regular judgment. Whose fault is that?

There is much worse to report from the insurance company shareholder standpoint.

When we’ve got the default judgment disposal date, typically a 10-minute hearing in Liverpool County Court, a disposal bundle is prepared and served on the defendant and the defendant’s insurers. The defendant’s insurers know by that stage, if they didn’t know beforehand, that proceedings have been issued and they are aware of the disposal date and our intention to ask the court to dispose of the case on that date.

Astonishingly, in more than 60% of such cases in which I appear before the district judge I am unopposed. Damages are assessed, together with costs and 100% success fee. I noted with interest and with no sense of surprise that Jackson has been assisted by the input of the Liverpool County Court judiciary, all of whom are excellent and highly experienced in road traffic litigation under the leadership of Judge Stephen Stewart QC.

It would, however, be a surprise if their representations did not include some reference to the failure of defendant insurers to attend these disposal hearings, because every district judge in Liverpool before whom it has been my privilege to appear, has expressed to me complete bewilderment at the apparent lack of concern on the part of insurers to pay 100% uplift on costs. However, I note that there is no such reference to that in Jackson’s report.

If defendants get their act together sufficiently well to be able to instruct counsel to attend the disposal hearing, such counsel often arrives at court with instructions to offer only a limited amount of damages, which he or she knows will be comfortably beaten and will put the insurer at risk of 100% success fee. Despite having advice from counsel to increase the offer, insurers resolutely refuse to accept that advice and, rather than pay an additional £200 or £300 damages and 12.5% success fee, prefer to pay only the sum that they are prepared to offer and pay an additional £2,500 + by way of costs. Defendant insurer shareholders would be appalled if they were made aware of the true position.

In those cases where defendants get their act together after judgment has been entered, but before damages have been assessed at the 10-minute disposal hearing, my firm is often served with an application to set aside a regular judgment on the grounds set out in civil procedure rule 13.3, namely that there is a real likelihood of the defendant being able to successfully defend the claim. These applications are supported by a witness statement endorsed with a statement of truth, and often by a draft defence bearing a statement of truth. District judges understandably in the face of such evidence grant the application together with an adverse costs order (whose fault is that?). But what so often happens thereafter is that the defendant insurer will promptly make an acceptable offer to settle together with costs, but of course they avoid the 100% success fee and only pay the 12.5% success fee. Yet no evidence has emerged in such cases which would undermine the ‘real likelihood’ of successfully defending the case, it is simply a tactic to avoid the costs consequences of their own inefficiencies. I am old enough and certainly ugly enough to remember a time when such tactics would be regarded as an abuse of the court’s process.

SolutionNo properly run claims department of an insurance company should be paying a 100% success fee unless they are really unlucky in a liability trial. If the percentage of my resolved cases, which are disposals as distinct from liability trials, is replicated in the data in Jackson’s report, and if my calculator is reliable, then defendant insurers should not be paying a 100% success fee in any more than 0.01% of cases.

In addition, if they got a proper grip of these claims they could significantly reduce the base costs. The solution is in their hands. The solution is not to reduce the costs payable to claimant solicitors for work which is done largely as a result of the defendant’s inefficiencies.

So why don’t the insurers do anything about it?I suspect that the explanation lies in the fact that the percentage of premium that is paid out in claimant’s damages and costs has not changed for many years. If that percentage doesn’t change then their business model doesn’t need to be changed. If, in pursuit of their primary fiduciary duty, namely to produce a profit for their shareholders, they can reduce that percentage through a campaign of spin, persuading everybody that excessive, disproportionate fees are being paid to greedy fat cat, 'no win, no fee' solicitors and thereby get the claimant solicitors costs reduced, then that is infinitely preferable to having to find the money to invest in improved systems, training and supervision in their claims department to generate the savings that could so easily be achieved. Furthermore, they would then have the added bonus of even less pressure to put their own house in order, which in turn increases pressure on claimants their solicitors and the courts.

Fixed post issue costsIf these proposals are implemented there is a real risk that there will be a reduction in the number of solicitors prepared to undertake this work. Post-issue fixed fees in the matrix referred to in Jackson’s report are too low. They may be based on agreed data provided by Professor Genn, but I suspect that data is out of date and doesn’t reflect the increase costs that are being incurred by repeated and, in many cases unjustified, allegations of fraud against claimants. This is the latest tactic in the campaign of spin being advanced by defendant insurers.

That brings me to the third ‘myth’ alluded to above, namely that fraud is widespread.

There is no doubt that there is a problem of fraud. What is unclear is the extent of that fraud. Defendant insurers say that it’s widespread, and recent decisions which have resulted in successful prosecutions in the tort of deceit and the referrals for criminal prosecutions have simply emboldened them in their spin and tactical approach to defending accident claims. Allegations are made on the flimsiest of evidence – for example if their own insured is not responding to them, it must be a fraudulent claim!

Unfortunately some members of the judiciary have become convinced that fraud is widespread, but many fail to appreciate that it is for the defendant alleging fraud to prove that fraud.

For example, there is an unwillingness on the part of some judges to strike out defences where there is a clear implication of fraud, but where defendants refuse to pin their colours to that particular mast. Any trial judge reading the papers is put on notice that the claim is thought by the defendants to be fraudulent, even though it’s not specifically pleaded.

That cannot be right. Defendants should be required either to plead fraud or to delete any suggestion of fraud and simply put the claimant to his proof. Robust case management in these sorts of cases would significantly reduce costs. There is further judicial unwillingness to strike out part of a defence which pleads that the case is fraudulent and that it is for the claimant to prove that his claim is genuine. As I understand the law, there is a presumption of innocence in civil cases, Constantine Line v Imperial Smelting [1942] AC154. This is being ignored and the burden of proving that a claim is genuine is being wrongly shifted on to the claimant.

More disturbingly, there is a circuit judge in a London County Court who, when fraud is alleged, requires that the claimant presents himself at the directions hearing, under pain of having his case stuck out. I instructed experienced junior counsel to go along to the directions hearing, just in case the claimant, for some perfectly good reason, was unable to turn up.

As it happens, the client couldn’t turn up for a legitimate reason, but there was no evidence before the court to establish that legitimate reason. Counsel was able to persuade the circuit judge not to strike the case out, but the judge refused to make an order for directions in the absence of the claimant in an otherwise straightforward RTA case. Instead he made an unless order, requiring the claimant to pay £500 wasted costs for the defendant and further requiring him to make a personal application to lift the stay that the judge imposed, notwithstanding that he was represented by solicitors. That cannot be right.

So pervasive and persuasive are the defendants’ tactics in this area that the judiciary very rarely orders indemnity costs where fraud is not proved.

Defendants routinely disclose in such cases reams and reams of paperwork including credit reference checks. These identify a number of people living at various addresses, all of which have to be checked out with the claimant to see if there is any sort of connection. Much of the information is inaccurate. Addresses are identified as 'hot addresses' if more than one claim emanates from that address irrespective of the identity of the claimant. I often see credit checks in relation to individuals who have the same name as our client, but which have nothing to do with our client in fact. It is hugely time consuming to go through that paperwork.

So long as these sort of things are allowed to happen insurance companies will continue to exert unfair, and undue influence in this kind of litigation, and reducing claimant solicitors costs reduces the ability of claimants to expose this sort of thing in a way that is going to make the judiciary realise what is happening.

The first a claimant solicitor generally knows about potential fraud is when it is alleged by the defendant, often for the first time after the issue of proceedings. If an allegation of fraud is put to a fraudulent claimant he will often simply not respond and an application will then be made to come off the court record and close the file. However, when such an allegation is made to a genuine claimant they will often decide, despite feeling outraged and being made to feel like a criminal, that they don’t want to go to court because I can’t guarantee them, given the hazards of litigation, that the judge won’t find them to be a fraudster and that the possible and profoundly damaging consequences of such a finding will not follow given the latitude that is given to defendant insurers and their solicitors. Many such genuine claimants simply don’t regard a claim of £1,500 or £2,000 to be worth the risk and will therefore walk away. That is a denial of justice.

So far as the insurance industry is concerned they will simply chalk that case up as another example of fraud on their database. Worse still, a genuine claimant will always be faced in any subsequent genuine claim for damages by the accusation that he abandoned an earlier claim because it was fraudulent! There are examples of this already. In short, there will be a significant percentage of alleged fraud claims on the defendants insurer's database which are not fraudulent claims at all. They include claims of genuine claimants who are not prepared to risk their reputation and to be wrongly found to be a fraudster. It is absolutely critical that the public has confidence in the judiciary to deal with these allegations robustly and fairly at case management conferences.

Incidentally the Claimant’s disbursements, in such cases won’t be picked up by the ATE provider. Many Clients can’t afford to pay the disbursements and solicitors are left having to absorb those disbursements and the costs thrown away by an allegation of fraud made very late in the day and often after the issue of proceedings because of the inefficiencies on the part of the Defendant insurers.

Conclusion1. There should be no problem for claimants solicitors with proposals or changes in the rules that will deliver a quicker and speedier resolution of their cases for a fair fixed fee. After all, the client wants his case resolved quickly and, if I’m not going to get paid until the end of the case, the sooner it’s concluded the better. I am aware that a number of my claimant colleagues don’t share my willingness to adopt fixed fees throughout the process. I can understand their concerns. However, if the fixed fee is properly assessed then I don’t think claimants will have much to fear. The big problem is fixing the fee at an initial fair rate taking account of the inefficiencies of the defendants insurers and their solicitors, and ensuring that it is properly and regularly reviewed, which simply hasn’t happened in relation to the fixed costs that we have at the moment.

2. Insurers could significantly reduce the costs they are paying to claimant solicitors if they trained their staff properly, supervised them properly and used management systems designed to deliver an efficient service.

3. It cannot be right that innocent claimants should have to subsidise their own legal costs, a significant percentage of which are incurred solely because the defendant’s representatives are inefficient and ill-trained.

4. The present system of funding should not be altered. To implement the recommendations in Jackson’s report would simply give a green light to the defendant insurers to continue their inefficient methods of dealing with claims, and make claimants pay for that inefficiency or be denied competent representation. Furthermore, the unnecessary waste of court resources will continue.

5. There should be 'docketing' of cases. This would lead to robust and much better case management.

6. Access to justice and the overriding objective is primarily about protecting the weak and vulnerable against the strong and powerful, and the individual against the corporation. We need to remember that the claimant victim is likely to be the good guy and that the bad guy is represented by the defendant insurers. We fail to remember that at our peril.