NICHOLAS MURRAY DISCOVERS THE BEST FOREIGN JURISDICTIONS IN WHICH TO BRING A PI CLAIM AND LOOKS AT HOW TO FIND A GOOD LOCAL LAWYEREvery year countless British tourists and travellers are injured abroad.

The lucky ones, whose injuries occur while in the hands of a package tour operator, have had the benefit, since 1992 of European regulations allowing the plaintiff to sue the tour company in a British court -- provided the holiday was sold in the UK.

But for those who are injured while holidaying independently there is generally no alternative to suing in a foreign jurisdiction, unless there is a British-domiciled defendant.

If that sounds complicated and fraught with difficulty that is exactly what it is.'It's a demanding and complex area,' says Clive Garner of Irwin Mitchell in Sheffield, a firm specialising in these cases.

'There are lots of pitfalls: different limitation periods, definitions of liability, rules on expert witnesses, evidence gathering, and different legal systems.

For the inexperienced it can be a minefield.' Some high street firms gamely have a go but many end up sending their files to specialist firms or their clients eventually insist on it.

Irwin Mitchell has a higher rate of such referrals than in any other category.The first big problem with personal injury cases of this kind -- which can include road accidents, slipping and tripping, diving accidents in swimming pools, water sports injuries, coach crashes, hijackings, attacks by elephants on safari, ski-ing and tobagganing accidents, even being beaten up -- is that the case must be brought abroad and a foreign lawyer found.

There is no handy register of foreign personal injury (PI) lawyers and in some countries there are particular difficulties in locating a specialist lawyer.In most jurisdictions, lawyers do not specialise in PI legislation.

Nor do many foreign lawyers act exclusively for plaintiffs as happens in the UK.

Instead, they have a tradition of acting for both for plaintiffs and defendants -- a fact that caused some lively debate at the inaugural conference of the Pan-European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL ) in Amsterdam last year.The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) was instrumental in helping to launch PEOPIL in an attempt to resolve some of these issues.

Contacts forged there -- and at the second conference in Barcelona last month -- have been of great assistance to PI lawyers but the organisation is still a fledgling one.

It hopes to develop a data-base of lawyers in all European jurisdictions, which will also record interesting cases, but at present it is largely a question of tapping into informal sources of information.

APIL's European special interest group secretary, barrister Philip Meade, admits 'it is hit-and-miss'.Once a foreign lawyer has been identified to act in the country where the accident took place, any chances of receiving costs in the foreign court for the preparatory or liaising work done by the lawyer at home often vanish.

Costs, in fact, vary enormously from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, as do levels of damages.

And as Mr Meade points out: 'The new world of conditional fees is unlikely to have a significant impact on foreign accidents.' There is an additional problem in that it can be difficult to enforce judgments made against some foreign insurance companies.

Unless there is a strong likelihood of winning substantial damages, the advice would be, on cases of a kind that would almost certainly be taken on at home, not to bother.And although some countries such as the US appear to be a good place for the plaintiff, the fact that the US lawyers are paid with a percentage of damages means that they may be reluctant to take on a case judged too small, or one that presents difficulties in determining liability.

'We're being driven that way,' says John Price, co-ordinator of APIL's European special interest group.

'Regrettably, with legal aid disappearing and pressure on fees, it will happen here.'Several European countries have a tariff scheme for compensating injuries not dissimilar to that used by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in this country and generally compensation awards are at levels much lower than those awarded in the English courts.

'Damages vary massively,' says Mr Garner.

As a general rule, damages are lower in foreign jurisdictions with the exception of the US and the Irish Republic.

However, in some countries, such as Italy, Greece and traditionally Spain there is often a wider variety of plaintiffs allowed to claim bereavement-type damages in fatal accidents than there would be in a British action.

Many more family members crowd forward after a fatal car accident and expect to receive damages in excess of those recoverable in Britain.

In French law there are not fixed bereavement damages in the case of a fatal accident but different members of the family are entitled to make a claim for their loss.In developing countries, damages can often be significantly lower.

Awards might be thought generally to be higher in more developed countries but there are exceptions like Germany, where the benefits of the public health and social security systems are considered to offset relatively lower damages.

In some developing countries, cultural differences are reflected in the expectation that families will bear more of the burden.

There have been steps within the European Union (EU) towards trying to harmonise damages but any agreement is a long way off.

Nearer in prospect is a proposal to ensure that insurers have a bureau in each country to allow local lawyers to negotiate in their own countries regarding foreign claims.Other problems include the fact that although the EU demands minimum insurance cover for car drivers, some countries, such as Greece, have had much lower limits of indemnity.

And accidents are not always simple.

In one case, an English moped driver involved in an accident in Spain where his English passenger was injured was sued in Britain because both plaintiff and defendant were English.

There have also been incidents of two foreigners colliding in a country foreign to both, raising interesting questions of jurisdiction and giving opportunities for forum-shopping.But there are wider differences, particularly beyond Europe, that make a PI case much more like a leap into the unknown.

In some jurisdictions -- such as the Dominican Republic -- there is both much more judicial discretion and highly unfavourable rules governing costs.

In the vast majority of foreign jurisdictions, in fact, it is rare for all the plaintiff's costs to be paid if he or she wins.

Quite apart from linguistic difficulties, understandable ignorance of such global differences in legal procedure make it obvious that only a specialist local lawyer could possibly hope to be the guide through such a minefield.

And given the way that legal systems embody particular cultural values it is unlikely that a specialist local guide will ever become dispensable.MULTI-PARTY ACTIONS AGAINST TRAVEL COMPANIES ARE FINALLY BECOMING VIABLE.

STEPHEN WARD REPORTS ON THEIR EVOLUTIONPeter Stewart, a partner in City firm Field Fisher Waterhouse was acting a few years ago for a travel company which received a claim from a couple describing their nightmare experience on a package holiday.

They claimed everything had been wrong -- bad food, late planes, a noisy hotel.The next year he was representing a different travel firm, and a second letter from the couple reached him.

It was word for word the same letter, except it was about another holiday in a different resort.

'I wrote to them pointing out that it seemed a remarkable coincidence, he recalls.

'I didn't hear from them again.'Much has changed since then.

Mr Stewart, who is one of two partners at the head of the firm's aviation, travel and tourism department, and has been defending holiday companies for 17 years, says: 'Until recently we would not usually find ourselves opposing the same firm more than once.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s we would deal with firms representing two to four claimants who were one-off clients.

'After about 1993 it began to alter,' he continues.

'We began to face multi-party actions, and some firms repeatedly.'Anne Harvey, a solicitor, and research manager for Holiday Which?, has also noticed this trend.

'There has been an exponential growth in claims,' she says.

'Two years ago, I knew of only two multi-party claims.

Now I am aware of 50.' The value of claims against the holiday industry was last month estimated by one of the biggest tour operators, Thomson, at £40 to £50 million a year.Holiday litigation has been transformed by the Package Tour Regulations, a statutory instrument which came into force at the end of 1992.

These made the tour operator in Britain liable for any part of a package holiday -- the flight, the hotel, and anything else included in the package.According to Bronwen Courtenay-Stamp, of Exeter law firm Stones Cann and Hallett, experts in holiday damages litigation, before these regulations came into force, a holidaymaker often had to seek redress abroad, which in many cases was not worthwhile.Another factor which solicitors say has helped claims to mushroom is the growth of consumers' awareness of their legal ri ghts, fed by consumer and holiday shows on television.

As Tim Lawrence of Irwin Mitchell's Birmingham office says: 'If somebody has a bad tummy on holiday, they don't just put it down to experience any more, they want somebody to pay for it.'Solicitors also point to the extension of cheap packages in undeveloped countries where basic hygiene is lacking, and an increase in holidays where all food is included in the price, so that every person on the tour eats the same lukewarm buffet and is struck with the same infection.A major catalyst for a growth in claims was a massively-publicised case which began four years ago, involving victims of eight notifiable illnesses on the Colombian island of San Andres.

The implications for the holiday company First Choice were so great that it instructed its corporate lawyers, Herbert Smith, in its defence.

The defendants eventually settled for a sum widely reported to be in excess of £300,000.

The details are cloaked by a strict confidentiality clause.Such changes have altered the economics of holiday litigation.

Until recently, for a case to be viable, clients needed to be backed by holiday insurers, or be legally-aided, or the claim had to be big enough, and be for personal injury, so that no win, no fee agreements could apply.But Irwin Mitchell, which represented the holidaymakers in the San Andres case, says that by using economies of scale, it has opened up a market even where none of these avenues of funding applies.

Its Birmingham office, where the holiday litigation department is based, now has ten employees and has this year set up a separate unit alongside its personal injury holiday claims handling, to deal specifically with other 'bad holiday' claims.Mr Lawrence, the senior assistant in charge of the new department, says: 'My cases are those where you get people from the same group where the holiday has not been good enough.

We give an estimate for the fixed cost up to litigation, enough for us to prepare a sound case to negotiate with the holiday company.' If the holiday firm will not settle, Irwin Mitchell offers clients three choices: to give up, to fight the case themselves, or carry on, with interim billing.Although claims for delayed flights, noisy hotels and missing swimming pools rarely exceed a few hundred pounds per head, they are commercially viable because the large group action is relatively simple to assemble.

'Holidaymakers who all have a bad experience tend to compare notes, exchange addresses and phone numbers, which makes group actions possible, and makes the cases stronger,' he says.

'We can make money from it because we are experienced in multi-party actions, and we have the information technology to run them,' he says.

The more expensive the holiday and therefore the claims, the smaller the group which is viable because each claimant will stake higher costs, he explains.The San Andres case also spawned Holiday Travelwatch, a voluntary consumer clearing-house set up in Birmingham by Brenda Wall, one of the successful San Andres litigants.

She has been shocked by the degree of ignorance of travel law among many non-specialist solicitors.'I have just spoken to a form which has been representing 17 holidaymakers for a year,' she says.

'They hadn't even heard of the package holiday regulations.'She says many holidaymakers will go to the firm which does their conveyancing, and all they will get will be a £50 travel voucher, while others on the same holiday get hundreds of pounds.Mrs Wall has put together many group claims which she has then passed to specialist solicitors.

Freeth Cartwright Hunt Dickens in Nottingham is currently handling a case involving several hundred holidaymakers who endured the same Turkish holiday, and she is about to pass another 500-party claim to Irwin Mitchell.Mr Stewart has noticed the same trend from the other side.

'Holidaymakers have always been in groups -- 50 people in the same coach would have the same experience.

In the past, we never used to know if the claimants were in touch with each other.

Now it is much more likely that they are,' he says.ROBERT VERKAIK CONSIDERS HOW BEST TO ACT FOR CLIENTS WHO ARE ARRESTED WHILE ABROAD, AND LOOKS AT SOME FAMOUS FOREIGN TRIALSThe difficulties faced by lawyers representing UK citizens on the Costa Del Sol can hardly be compared to the inscrutable legal systems of the middle east.

The punishment for theft in some Arab countries is limb severance whereas in Spain defendants can expect to part with most of their holiday spending money.

Even jurisdictions which have a reputation for even-handed justice do not always abide by international rules of human rights -- the Woodward trial is a case in point.

English lawyers representing UK citizens facing criminal charges abroad rarely describe the foreign travel as a perk of the job.The truth is that language barriers, stroppy policeman and labyrinthine legal systems make representing clients in foreign jurisdictions a brief not to be taken lightly.

Whether it is the World Cup cities of Marseilles and Saint-Etienne or the Spanish resorts of Benidorm and Ibiza, solicitors acting for Britons abroad need to be prepared.Recent cases, such as those of Louise Woodward, Deborah Parry and Nick Leeson, have raised the profile of the UK lawyer caught up in a hostile foreign jurisdiction.Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, has 80 such cases on his books.

He says that at any one time there are 2,000 Britons held in prisons overseas.

'We are seriously concerned about 40 such cases.' he adds, contending that international rules of fair trials have not been followed'.

Mr Jakobi was called in by the Woodward family shortly after their daughter was arrested.

He says the Woodward case is a good example of how Britons can fall foul of modern and sophisticated legal systems which he alleges breach rules of international human rights.

By denying the jury access to the defence medical evidence, there was a breach of the principle of 'parity of arms,' claims Mr Jakobi.He contends that the build up of prejudicial feeling against Louise Woodward contaminated the jury's perception of the case and made it impossible for her to have a fair trial.

'The only cases which are comparable to this are those in third world justice systems,' he argues.Mr Jakobi receives on average two requests a week from UK solicitors asking for advice on how to help clients abroad.

Many of them concern UK citizens who have been arrested in France and Spain.

Both countries, says Mr Jakobi, have aspects of their criminal justice systems which are seriously flawed.

In France, drug offenders are not given the right to a trial by jury while in Spain a large section of the judiciary is either poorly trained or is still tainted by Franco principles of justice.Roger Pannone, the solicitor who advised Deborah Parry, one of the British nurses convicted by a Saudi Arabian court of murdering fellow nurse Yvonne Guildford, says the Saudi legal system threw up many unexpected hurdles.

'The English solicitor is on a steep learning curve [in Saudi Arabia] and has to deal with both the sovereignty of th e state and a different religion,' he says.Any attack on the way the police had investigated the case and the way they extracted confessions from the two suspects was perceived as an attack on both the state and the Islamic religion.

Mr Pannone and his team spent much time trying to convince the Saudis that this was not so and that any criticism was restricted to a 'minority' of police officers who were alleged to have pressurised the nurses into making uncorroborated confessions.

Nick Leeson's solicitor, Stephen Pollard, of City law firm Kingsley Napley, advises UK solicitors to avoid the temptation to 'meddle' in foreign law.

'It's difficult enough giving advice in your own jurisdiction,' he says.

'Even in a country like the US you can be caught out.'Both lawyers agree the golden rule is to always instruct a local lawyer.

In countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore, where English legal representatives are not recognised in domestic courts, this is essential guidance.

The Law Society's head of court business and deputy director of policy, Diane Burleigh says the first inquiry should be made to the Law Society to establish whether there are formal contacts between the UK jurisdiction and the local bar association.

She says, it is solicitors and MPs to whom the families of prisoners held abroad first turn.The Society has worked closely with the charity Prisoners Abroad which has already produced a booklet for MPs who are asked to help constituents imprisoned overseas.

Prisoners Abroad is now working on guidance for solicitors and a booklet is expected to be available by the end of the year.

Ms Burleigh says the charity is a good first port of call for solicitors who are asked to help in a jurisdiction of which they have no knowledge.

The key, she says is to find the local lawyer you can trust.

But Mr Pollard warns: 'If you don't find one that you have a good working relationship with then you are starting ten points down.'When Mr Pollard's client Nick Leeson was arrested at Frankfurt Airport, Kingsley Napley used its contacts in Germany and at the American Bar Association to find the best local lawyer for the job.

They came up with Eberhard Kempf who, according to Mr Pollard, spoke reasonable English and had an excellent knowledge of the German federal and the regional Frankfurt systems.

One of the reasons Mr Pollard was chosen for the Leeson case was his own command of the German language.

Although he was not fluent, the language barrier was quickly overcome.

'When we were discussing the case he spoke in German and I spoke in English,' says Mr Pollard.

'This is because it's easier to understand someone speaking a foreign language than it is to speak it yourself.'In Saudi Arabia, Mr Pannone made great use of an English qualified lawyer who was working for a Saudi law firm.

Peter Krivinskas, of Manchester law firm Krivinskas & Co, is still advising Asil Nadir, who jumped bail five years ago.

Mr Krivinskas's role has been made that much easier since the Turkish authorities have not taken any action against Mr Nadir.

'I have not needed to deal with them because he is someone they have a great deal of respect for,' says Mr Krivinskas.

Instead, it was the Polly Peck administrators who fell foul of Turkish law when they took a UK administration order to Turkey believing they could enforce it against assets over there.

Says Mr Krivinskas: 'They didn't realise they needed to take out fresh proceedings in Turkey.

The Turkish legal system is an old one which has just as many different kinds of courts as we do.'Mr Krivinskas's advice to solicitors advising anyone arrested in a remote part of Turkey, a la Midnight Express, is not to go and hire the biggest legal gun in the country.

'It's the equivalent of a QC turning up at a magistrates court,' he says.

'It's better to ask well known lawyers in Istanbul who they would recommend in the locality.' Mr Krivinskas argues that local lawyers will know the local magistrates and know how they like cases to be presented.

This is a point echoed by Mr Pannone, who does a lot of work in the US.

'Despite the federal system, the US is really 50 different state jurisdictions,' says Mr Pannone.

'Hiring a smart lawyer from New York or Washington to appear in a Florida court is not always the best way.' Jeffrey Bayes, a partner at Burton Copeland, and an expert in extradition cases, says not every local lawyer will have the right experience.

'Many towns,' says Mr Bayes, 'have general practice lawyers who are not necessarily experts in criminal law.

In Cyprus, they don't have a legal aid system nor do they have enough crime to keep them in business.UK lawyers also have to be wary of the beguiling similarity of the foreign legal systems which are based on our own, such as those in Commonwealth countries.

Mr Bayes says it is tempting to ask permission to use English QCs to speak in court but this risks giving the case too high a profile.

However, behind the scenes face-to-face negotiations can sometimes pay dividends for clients.

In 1995, Mr Bayes flew to Stockholm to speak to prosecutors bringing a multi-million pound case of fraud against a UK citizen who was the subject of an extradition hearing in this country.

Last month, the divisional court ruled against the extradition application.

While Mr Bayes does not claim that his meetings in Stockholm won the case, he says similar approaches can help.Lawyers who undertake this kind of work must be prepared to travel.

Mr Bayes once visited Cyprus 14 times in six months when 22 British citizens, attending a car launch, were detained by Cypriot authorities following a suspected arson attack on the conference centre.

When Nick Leeson was extradited to Germany, Mr Pollard would catch an early morning flight and return in the evening for a three-hour meeting with his client.

The cost of this air travel is only part of the cost picked up by the client.

Mr Leeson had to pay for representation by Kingsley Napely, a German firm and a local lawyer in Singapore.Deborah Parry was in a similar position and had to find funds to pay for English, Saudi and Australian lawyers.

An Australian lawyer was called in when it became apparent that the only way the death sentence could be commuted was if Yvonne Guildford's relatives agreed to a payment of blood money.

But more often than not it is the non-legal sort of help that a client locked up in a foreign jail will require most such as access to family and food.

And as Mr Pollard stresses, if the client is jumpy, a little hand-holding can go a long way.