The government has published provisional statistics on injuries on public roads in Great Britain...
From 1 April this year anyone claiming damages for injuries suffered in an accident or through medical treatment will face less favourable financial terms in respect of legal costs due to changes that the Government is bringing in which are aimed at saving insurance companies and the NHS money. Where a claim is funded under a Conditional Fee Agreement (or No Win No Fee as they are sometimes called), the claimant will now be required to pay some of the legal costs out of their damages, whereas, until now, the compensating party has been responsible for all costs.
Under the new arrangements a claim can be brought either under a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) or a Damages Based Agreement (DBA) but under both, the successful claimant will have to surrender a portion of their compensation towards legal costs. Although there is a cap on the amount of costs the claimant will be required to pay, in larger cases the bill to the claimant could realistically run to tens of thousands of pounds. While the insurance industry is understandably happy about this, it is hard to justify why the party who has suffered loss should also be responsible for the cost of recovering those losses. Rightly or wrongly however, the changes are coming in and will apply to any agreement entered after 1 April regardless of when the injury was suffered. Current cases will be covered by the old rules even where they are resolved after April, whether it be by out of court settlement or at trial.
If you have a potential claim but have not decided whether to pursue it yet, it would certainly be worthwhile to discuss your options with a lawyer now. This advice is perhaps most pertinent to clinical negligence claims where individuals don’t automatically consider claiming in the same way that they tend to after an accident. Either way, now is the time to enquire.
For further information or advice relating to this or other personal injury/clinical negligence matters, contact David Greenhalgh on 01689 887806 or email him at david.greenhalgh@cwj.co.uk