Personal injury groups have been given permission to intervene in two cases which could go a long way to resolving how to compensate more complex RTA claims in the supposedly self-service portal era. 

The Court of Appeal has granted a request to leapfrog the High Court in two conjoined appeals from Birkenhead County Court relating to mixed injury claims.

All RTA claims worth less than £5,000 have gone through the Official Injury Claim portal since May 2021 but only whiplash injuries have a fixed tariff for damages. Compensation for hybrid claims, which feature both whiplash and another physical injury, is an issue that was never addressed by the Civil Liability Act and it was assumed that the courts would make a decision.

Representative groups had wanted to wait for a large cohort of cases to test in the Court of Appeal, but in the meantime Liverpool firm Robert James Solicitors pursued two test cases that had come in front of District Judge Hennessy at Birkenhead, Briggs v Laditan and Rabot v Hassam. The defendant insurer intends to appeal Rabot and both parties have been granted permission to appeal Briggs.

Effectively the court in both cases adopted the approach of applying a reduction to the overall award where there was an overlap of loss of amenity from two different injuries.

Ryan Siner, managing director of Robert James Solicitors, told the Gazette last month that the claims were relatively simple and should provide some certainty to the rest of the sector.

Rejecting the option of handing the claims over as part of a group, he added: ‘This is a signature part of our practice and it is important to our clients it is handled with the appropriate level of care.’

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and Motor Accident Solicitors Society were brought together last year to collect the basket of cases and were initially reluctant to be involved with the two test cases.

That position appears to have shifted, with both groups given permission to intervene on behalf of the claimant group of the OIC.

‘Finding test cases has been extremely difficult because of ongoing and well-documented problems with the new portal which was set up to deal with low value traffic claims,' said APIL secretary Brett Dixon. ‘There is a broad range of issues to be considered in mixed injury claims and the test cases which are being brought outside of the stakeholder framework have provided a very timely opportunity for us to gain clarity from the Court of Appeal about how these issues should be dealt with as quickly as possible.’

The latest OIC portal statistics covering July to October 2022 show that while 96.5% of claims included a whiplash-tariff element, 67.3% were also mixed claims.

Sue Brown, chair of MASS, said the courts had recognised the need for urgent guidance on these issues. ‘Our concern, and that of the wider stakeholder group, has always been that the Court of Appeal is given the opportunity to consider the full range of scenarios that will affect those making a claim for whiplash and non-whiplash injuries.’

The expedited appeals will be heard on either 30 November or 1 December.

 

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