Personal injury lawyers warned that the government was taking ‘a step backwards’ this week as it announced that it will consult on Lord Justice Jackson’s plans for reform of the way lawyers are paid in civil cases.
Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said the government will focus on no-win no-fee agreements as part of an autumn consultation on Jackson’s proposals for civil litigation costs.
Jackson recommended abolishing the recoverability of conditional fee agreement (CFA) success fees and after-the-event (ATE) insurance premiums from the losing party, while increasing general damages in personal injury, defamation and other tort claims by 10% to compensate. He recommended the use of contingency fee agreements instead.
Jackson’s recommendation to abolish referral fees in personal injury cases will not be considered as part of the consultation.
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers said the proposed CFA reforms would be detrimental to claimants. ‘Shifting costs onto claimants is a step backwards, and could disenfranchise many injured people from the justice system, because they simply won’t be able to afford to bring legitimate cases,’ it said.
But Dan Cutts, president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, said the consultation was ‘a very welcome step in the right direction’.
However, he warned that Jackson’s proposals should not be implemented piecemeal. He said: ‘Jackson set out his recommendations as an interlinked package and this is very important. Lord Woolf’s report of 1996 was meant to be a comprehensive code to speed up litigation and make it more cost effective; however, it was implemented only in part and then had CFAs overlaid on top. This has led to the unsustainable situation that Jackson has set out to redress.’
Djanogly said that Jackson’s recommendations will be taken forward by the government ‘as a matter of priority’ and that CFA reform ‘should lead to significant costs savings, while still enabling those who need access to justice to obtain it’.
He added that CFAs ‘have played a role in giving access to justice’, but ‘high costs under the existing arrangements have now become a serious concern, particularly in clinical negligence cases against the NHS Litigation Authority and in defamation proceedings’.
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