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Have you had an injury?

The litigation system in this country at the moment is the best in the world with good levels of access to justice in most areas due to cfa's. However, it is still very difficult for vulnerable individuals to bring cases particularly in the areas of clinical negligence and disease where cases can be vey risky for law firms to take on and few lawyers have the expertise required. Bringing in fixed fees and removing the recoverability of success fees and ate insurance would seriously reduce access to justice in these critical areas where the NHS and employees are sometimes due to negligence kiling or seriously injuring people. The sensible approach is to look at the courts fixing success fees in certain areas as has already been done in RTA. The real problem with litigation costs in most areas stems from the insurance companies not training staff to determine which cases to settle and which cases to defend. Tinkering with a system that currently works well could lead to increased costs and huge problemsif satellite litigation around these issues cloggs the courts. Lord Jackon has no experience of disease, clinical negligence, or personal injury claims generally and nor I don't think do any of the minsters. Certainly Mr Djanogoly was a city corporate lawyer with no experience of litigation nevermind personal injury so how could he make decisions about costs in these areas. The real agenda for the government will be to save money on the council's and NHS legal bills but the way to do this is to deal with the real issues ie why are doctors and councils negligently injuring people?

28-Jul-2010

5:34 pm