At last, someone has taken a Law Commission report seriously.

From 28 February the Court of Appeal will sit as a five-judge court to hear four appeals where the Law Commission's proposals on non-pecuniary damages will be debated.

If the court follows the commission's findings, damages for personal injury victims will be increased to bring awards into line with inflation over the past 30 or so years.

These, then, are exciting times for those of us who represent accident victims.

However, the insurance industry might view the position differently.There is of course no guarantee that the court will follow the Law Commission's findings, and will no doubt be invited firmly by the insurers' counsel to be less generous than the report concludes.

However, the reality is that damages in personal injury cases have fallen compared with the real value of money over the past 20 or 30 years, and that accident victims have been woefully under-compensated as a result.

The Law Commission's logic is clear and unassailable, and damages must rise to deliver justice to those injured in accidents.The insurance industry is likely to raise a more practical argument.

The usual result of any common law decision is that it has immediate effect; any increase in the general level of damages will affect all claims awaiting settlement.

For example, this is what happened when the decision in Page v Sheerness, on discount rates, was promulgated.

The outcome of that decision affected all outstanding cases.

The insurers say that if the new damages levels are going to apply to all existing claims then the industry will have under-reserved for the past three, and this will be a serious problem.This may indeed be the case, but the Court of Appeal simply does not have the jurisdiction to solve that particular dilemma.

Only legislation could achieve the result desired by the insurers.There is another practical issue to be addressed.

The cases before the court are not 'typical' personal injury cases.

One concerns post traumatic stress disorder, two others involve asbestosis damage.

Can the court give a sufficiently widely-worded judgment in these cases to enable practitioners to recalculate damages in all other cases? Will the Judicial Studies Board be standing by to produce a new version of its guidelines overnight?The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and the Forum of Insurance Lawyers were consulted by Court of Appeal managers in November.

The court wanted a raft of cases, from paraplegics to broken arms, so it could consider the Law Commission point with reference to a wide spectrum of 'typical' cases.

Predictably, it proved impossible to provide such a raft of cases, for all sorts of practical reasons that practitioners will readily understand.

Therefore, the court will have to do its best with the cases that it has, but it is vitally important that the judgment is sufficiently clear to enable practitioners to advise their clients on the immediate effect of the damages increase.What should lawyers do while waiting for the judgment, which we must anticipate might be reserved? Clients need to be told what is likely to happen so that they can make an informed decision about settlement of their claims no w.

They have to bear in mind that the precise recommendations of the Law Commission might not be followed.

They have to understand the arguments that insurers will put forward on delayed commencement.Insurers should, in the meantime, be asked to pay damages in accordance with the recommendations of the Law Commission, and be reminded that there have been two or three recent cases where judges have awarded uprated compensation.Of course, the outcome of the Court of Appeal cases cannot be predicted, but it does seem likely that damages in personal injury cases will, at last, be put back on to a proper economic footing.