Legal costs news update
Post Magazine has reported that a delay to the approval of the draft rules for the new RTA claims process means that the previous April 2010 implementation date will be postponed by at least a month. Hopefully the rules will be published long before that because I am meant to be speaking at a Central Law Training conference on this process on 12th March 2010. It will be an interesting day if the rules aren't out by then.
More bad news on the fixed costs front comes from the Gazette that reports the failure of agreement in relation to talks aimed at fixing costs for all fast track claims. These talks were instigated by Lord Justice Jackson as fixed fees for fast track cases are likely to form a central part of his final report. The failure of the talks is no great surprise given the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers is so strongly opposed to an extension of fixed fees and even walked out of the talks at one stage. As I suggested in a previous post, before they rejoined the talks: "If they simply wished to scupper the mediation, it would have made more sense to continue to play along and undermine the process from within". APIL will now no doubt claim that the failure of the mediation is evidence that, despite their best efforts, an extension of fixed costs is a bad idea.
More bad news on the fixed costs front comes from the Gazette that reports the failure of agreement in relation to talks aimed at fixing costs for all fast track claims. These talks were instigated by Lord Justice Jackson as fixed fees for fast track cases are likely to form a central part of his final report. The failure of the talks is no great surprise given the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers is so strongly opposed to an extension of fixed fees and even walked out of the talks at one stage. As I suggested in a previous post, before they rejoined the talks: "If they simply wished to scupper the mediation, it would have made more sense to continue to play along and undermine the process from within". APIL will now no doubt claim that the failure of the mediation is evidence that, despite their best efforts, an extension of fixed costs is a bad idea.
Labels: fixed fees
posted by Simon Gibbs at
5:38 AM
1 Comments:
The extension of fixed costs is indeed a bad idea. Just as no 2 clients are the same, no 2 claims, or the work required to successfully litigate such, are the same.
Whilst there is certainly comfort in fixing fees in advance, that also pre-supposes that all Insurers are the same, and will deal quickly and efficiently at all time with claims.
Sadly, the fact is most Insurers are geared to rejecting claims, certainly in the field outside of RTA's - consider that a "childrens" animated film such as "The Incredibles" can demonstrate its main characters miserable existence in real life by having him as a claims handler whose brief is to reject everything "to safeguard the interests of the shareholders", shows clearly the general perspective regarding Insurance companies attitude to claims.
Perhaps Lord Jackson, should gain a clearer perspective on the real problems in litigation, by watching DVD's !
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Anonymous, At
01 December, 2009 09:27
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