Courts Reform (Scotland) Bill - Scott Whyte, Watermans Solicitors
20/02/14. The Court Reform (Scotland) Bill was recently published by the Scottish Government, bringing to an end a four year period in which the shadow of Lord Gill’s review of the civil courts in Scotland has hung over civil litigators and in particular personal injury lawyers.
The Bill itself and indeed, Lord Gill’s 2009 report concluded that the Scottish court system was “slow, inefficient and expensive”. He was concerned that civil courts were not specialised enough and were subject to deferral or interruption and that civil cases faced long waits to be heard by the Court of Session due to the volume of cases raised in Scotland’s Supreme civil court.
Therefore, from a layman’s perspective at least, there was some expectation that the proposed legislative changes in the Bill might address these difficulties. If anything the proposals are likely to exacerbate the problems they are trying to eliminate. Instead of speeding up the justice system they will have a damaging effect on access to justice for accident victims...
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