PI lawyers support fixed fees for small road traffic cases but fear wider harm

INSURANCE FEARS: solicitors may be driven from sector while insurers string cases out

Claimant and defendant personal injury lawyers alike accepted the need to adopt some form of fixed costs package for small road traffic accidents.

A conference session on fixed costs heard a series of attacks on the recent decision in Halloran v Delaney (see [2002] Gazette, 12 September, 1), which held that a 20% standard figure for fee uplifts should be dropped to 5% retrospectively with effect from last September.

John Peysner, professor of civil justice at Nottingham Law School and chairman of the Civil Justice Council working group on recoverable costs, said the Halloran finding was 'singularly unhelpful'.

He said the working group would hold a forum at the end of the year at which predictable costs proposals will be put forward.

Professor Peysner said his intention was to create a model that was not 'uneconomic', adding: 'What we are aiming for is certainty for clients and lawyers.

I can well understand the problems [with costs] of claimant lawyers.'

He said it was understandable that costs should have risen since the introduction of the Woolf reforms as there is now more work for lawyers to do in preparing for cases.

Professor Peysner has commissioned research from two fellow academics to establish whether and by how much claimant solicitors costs have risen over the past two years, as insurers have alleged.

Martin Staples, senior partner of Kent-based Vizards Wyeth and Law Society Council representative of the Forum for Insurance Lawyers, said: 'Although most claimant solicitors are honest we are seeing time and again costs vaulting out of all proportion.'

Endorsing fixed fees, he said that all other businesses operate on the basis of predictable fees and 'we must realise that we are in the 21st century and society can no longer afford the old ways.'

Patrick Allen, senior partner with London firm Hodge Jones & Allen and president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), said there was no evidence that claimants' costs had risen.

He said there were many concerns among claimant lawyers about fixed costs: that there would be no level playing field with insurers, who would potentially string cases out; that fixed fees would never increase; and that good lawyers would be driven from the sector.

But he said APIL members would be prepared to consider an opt-in fixed costs scheme for small road traffic accidents.

Jeremy Fleming