Report comment

There is a ‘medical expert’ in the north-west, who has been practising for 20 or so years, who is extremely popular with claimant solicitors. Why? Because he GUARANTEES minimum prognoses of at least 12 months (at least it used to be 12 months, I believe he has upped it to 14-15 months since fixed costs were reduced).

When challenged about this, off the record, he merely states “what can they do? I just tell them that is my opinion!”

He has always been ridiculously popular with claimant solicitors, for obvious reasons. He is an out and out crook, and the solicitors that use him surely know this, but they alleviate their consciences by thinking either “what do I know, he’s the medical expert” or alternatively “my job is to secure the best result for my client, which means obtaining the most favourable medical report I can”.

And this expert is by no means unique, it’s well known in medico-legal circles that to 'get on' you have to be ‘claimant friendly’, a euphemism for “give long recovery periods”, and/or “turn a blind eye to signs of exaggeration”. The industry has been full of solicitors and medical experts happy to oil the wheels of inflated claims, for their own financial gain.

Of course these claims will never appear in any fraud statistics, so those in denial will no doubt continue to shout 'where's your evidence?'. But the prolonged actions of many dubious practitioners, both medical and legal, now means that genuinely injured parties, of which there are plenty, will suffer the consequences.