Cost chaos continues

Hopes that a solution to the costs chaos in personal injury cases will be reached by the end of 2002 have been dashed after the Civil Justice Council (CJC) revealed that its timetable for fixed costs is likely to slip into next year.

The council set up a working party to investigate the feasibility of fixed costs last December, but CJC member and former Society president Michael Napier said last week that a forum on the working party's findings would not happen before December 2002 or early January 2003.

'We have been looking at the data but we have a distance to go and we are moving as fast as we can,' he told a debate on fixed costs hosted by the City of Westminster and Holborn Law Society.

'Everyone is agitating for fast solutions but if we do that, we'll get it wrong.'

Patrick Allen, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said he hoped the council would take account of claimant solicitors' fears that fixed costs would cause insurers to drag cases out until their clients ran out of money.

Martin Staples, former president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, said that failure to cut the costs of litigation had come at a great price through higher insurance premiums.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, agreed that a solution to the problem could not come quickly enough.

'Questions over what costs can be recovered are poisoning the relationship between the two sides of the litigation industry,' he warned.

Paula Rohan