The Pan-European Organisation of Personal Injury lawyers is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Jon Robins looks at the history of the group and how legal issues in this field increasingly cross borders.


The European Court of Justice last month offered an illustration of the truly pan-European nature of personal injury (PI) law, when it came to the rescue of an Irish woman after she was injured in an accident as a passenger in a van in 1996.



The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) of Ireland, the body that settles claims of passengers in accidents involving uninsured cars, refused to pay compensation on the grounds that Elaine Farrell should not have been travelling in the van’s load-space in the first place.



‘The court has effectively overturned the Irish MIB position,’ says John Pickering, president of the Pan-European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL) and head of the PI department at national claimant firm Irwin Mitchell. ‘It is the kind of judgment that reverberates around the system in terms of the principles of road traffic law and the ability of accident victims to recover damages.’



The Luxembourg-based court argued that the EU’s Third Motor Insurance Directive requires all passengers to be covered by motor insurance and deemed Irish legislation incompatible with European law.



Brussels’ growing body of motor law is one of the subjects to be raised at PEOPIL’s tenth anniversary conference in Prague next month. The group was set up by a handful of like-minded lawyers, mainly from the UK and the Netherlands, keen to establish a dialogue in one of the most international areas of the law. Founding member and PEOPIL secretary Antoinette Collignon describes her initial interest in the group: ‘I noticed people were travelling a lot around Europe. We had clients who had accidents abroad and I thought it was important that we, as personal injury lawyers, should get together and form a group.’



PEOPIL formally became a charity in 1998 to improve and promote co-operation and communication between European jurisdictions in the field of PI law. Ms Collignon, a lawyer at the Amsterdam-based specialists Beer Advocaten, sees the group’s role as being chiefly about ‘the dissemination of knowledge and lobbying within the EU’.



PEOPIL appears to have proved its worth at the heart of Europe. It currently receives funding from the EU to cover its running costs of ¤85,000 plus other grants. As well as contributing to legislation, the group has also produced two books published and financed by the commission: Personal Injury Compensation in Europe and Fatal Accidents and Secondary Victims.



The group has now grown to 525 members, with 100 new members joining each year. It has representation from a total of 44 jurisdictions, including every EU member state, as well as Turkey, Croatia, South Africa, the US and Mexico. So what is driving the growth?



Wolfgang Resch, executive director at PEOPIL, says: ‘Lawyers recognise that they need to know about other jurisdictions’ law – it’s not enough to simply know about their own. You have to be aware of what’s going on in Brussels, rather than simply Berlin or Paris or wherever you might be based.’ Mr Resch lives up to the point – he is a German lawyer with a law degree from Austria, a PhD from Holland and an MBA from Edinburgh University.



Lawyers tend to be fairly parochial, not to say protectionist, about their own jurisdictions. So how does an international group go about representing such a diverse collection of interests?



Ms Collignon says: ‘Personal injury law across the continent varies a lot, but the main issue for all lawyers involved is that we should have access to justice for victims of accidents or medical negligence. They should be treated well and they should get a proper amount of compensation.’



Mr Pickering says: ‘We need to have some sort of common understanding so that accident victims don’t fall into the traps.’ He cites as an example the group’s success at influencing the European law on limitation periods. Earlier this year, the European Parliament backed a PEOPIL-inspired proposal that the European Commission should draft legislation harmonising national rules on limitation periods governing cross-border disputes over fatal accidents and injuries. That was achieved as a result of a report by Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, a solicitor and speaker at the forthcoming Prague conference, who had been working closely with the group.



‘Take the example of an English person injured in a road accident in Spain,’ Mr Pickering says. ‘Where should they litigate that case? If the starting point is Spain, because the accident happened there, they’d have to be very careful because there’s a one-year limitation period and time starts running immediately. However, one might think there are grounds to bring the action in the UK, where you have a three-year limitation period. Problems arise when a person tries to bring an action over here and then finds out that they should be bringing it in Spain and the one-year limitation period has already gone by.’



The PEOPIL proposal is for a fallback limitation period of four years. ‘We felt that it was something that wasn’t just for the benefit of the injured individual, but there was an upside for the insurer as well because a lot of legal costs are expended as a consequence of them taking steps to defeat limitation,’ Mr Pickering adds.



Another topic that is likely to be aired at the June conference is proposals to harmonise PI law across Europe. In a 2004 position paper, the group made clear that European legal systems were ‘too far apart to contemplate the unification or minimum harmonisation straight away’. In particular, the idea of a tariff of damages, or Barème, is likely to upset many claimant lawyers. ‘There are countries in southern Europe where it is common,’ says Bas Baljet, a PEOPIL board member and PI specialist at Dutch firm Tanger. ‘My view about tariff systems is that you always get less.’ He gives the example of student accommodation which used to come in two sizes – 25 sq m and 8 sq m – until the Dutch government introduced rules that accommodation should be a minimum of 12 sq m. ‘Since then, no apartment has been built bigger than 12 metres,’ he says. ‘It is the same with the Barème system. We’re very much against it, but the insurers are so used to getting their way because they are better organised and have larger firms to lobby and influence people.’



The Prague venue for this year’s conference is significant. Mr Pickering says: ‘The Czech Republic is a relatively new joiner from the Eastern bloc countries. It is only now starting to develop its personal injury law.’



Marie Cilinkova, a PEOPIL executive board member from the Czech Republic, anticipates that a small but enthusiastic gathering of about 18 local lawyers will attend the conference. PI law is a relatively new practice that has developed in the wake of the Velvet Revolution and the introduction of democracy.



Ms Cilinkova, who began her career as a lawyer in 1968, reports that many accident victims were well looked-after under the old regime. ‘We had a very progressive legal order,’ she says. ‘Employees were very well protected against accidents during work and damages were given through their firm. Every firm was insured and those damages were paid out by the insurance company. They are a lot less protected now.’



As she points out, many businesses employ people without the benefit of a contract, leaving staff without compensation should an accident happen.



Ms Cilinkova is delighted to play host to next month’s conference. She says: ‘I feel like a member of a very good family because we all have one aim and that is to help injured people – the people who have no one else to help them.’



Jon Robins is a freelance journalist