News Category 3
Historic Sexual Abuse: Where Next for Pi Claims? - Catarina Sjölin Knight, Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Law School and door tenant at 36 Bedford Row
25/05/14. Since sex abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile hit the headlines in late 2012 and the Metropolitan Police began Operation Yewtree, historic sexual abuse has rarely been absent from the media. Recent crime figures seem to show a surge in reports of sexual offences. There is a judicially-approved compensation scheme to provide Savile’s victims with capped payments from the Savile estate (following scrutiny of each case by an appointed barrister) which has been advertised in the national press. Where does this leave PI practitioners? Will there be a deluge of historic sexual abuse cases against the perpetrators of the abuse? Are erstwhile employers of abusers – and their insurers – staring into a financial pit? How will the courts deal with these claims; is it time for a quicker, cheaper method of settling them?
Are more historic allegations of sexual abuse being reported to the police? The most recent statistics on crime do show an increase in reporting of both rape and other sexual offending in the first full year since the Savile allegations became public: rape reports are up by 20% whilst the reporting of other sexual offences has risen by 15%. If we take ‘historic’ offences to be those allegedly committed one year or more before the report to the police, the best estimate suggests that 30% of the sexual offence reports to the police last year were historic (around 18,000 reports). As to the increase in reporting, around half of that was down to...
Image ©iStockphoto.com/jeffdalt
Public Liability and Highways Claims Post-Jackson: The Portals - Andrew Mckie, Clerksroom
25/05/14. The public liability (PL) portals came into effect on 31 July 2013. Any book looking at slipping and tripping claims post-Jackson, would not be complete without an examination of the portals, and perhaps more importantly for claimant practitioners, the exit points from the Low Value Portals. What stays in, and what comes out of the portal, may be a key decision for some claimant law firms as to whether they feel it is economical to undertake this type of work.
It is arguable that the success of the RTA portal, has encouraged the MOJ to introduce the Low Value Portal for slipping and tripping claims. However, early indications seems to be that the dropout rates from the portal are quite substantial, which is probably for two reasons; a) the timescales for the defendant to investigate cases in the portal are inadequate, and b) slipping and tripping cases are evidentially more complex than road traffic cases, hence it is much more difficult to determine the issue of liability.
If a slip or tripping claim starts in the Low Value Portal and liability is admitted, then the case will remain in the Portal to the conclusion, subject to other dropout points. If liability is denied, then the case will exit the Portal, and ordinarily, proceed in Fixed Recoverable costs, discussed in...
Image ©iStockphoto.com/picha
Public Liability and Highways Claims Post-Jackson: Part 36 and Litigation Tactics - Andrew Mckie, Clerksroom
24/05/14. Chapter two from the new book 'Occupiers, Highways and Defective Premises Claims: A Practical Guide Post-Jackson' by Andrew Mckie. This chapter deals with using the new amendments to the CPR post April 2013 and post July 2013, when the Jackson reforms came into effect to a) vet cases early on, b) obtain disclosure quickly, and c) settling the case before it gets to trial, and how Part 36 can encourage that.
CHAPTER TWO
PUBLIC LIABILITY AND HIGHWAYS CLAIMS POST-JACKSON: PART 36 AND LITIGATION TACTICS
It is clear that in relation to post-Jackson, post 31 July 2013 highways and public liability cases, the incentives for defendants and insurers to settle these cases has now been substantially reduced. These cases are now subject to portal and fixed recoverable costs, and as we have seen from the previous chapter the insurer can now run three or four of these claims to trial and lose them, for effectively the same costs as running one CFA claim to trial, with a 100% uplift under the pre-Jackson regime and losing that at trial.
This new litigation landscape of course poses enormous difficulties for claimant lawyers. The ‘50/50’ cases that previously may have been issued and then settled, before trial. This is no longer likely to happen. This means that law firms, more than ever, will have to be careful to vet claims more carefully before taking them on. To run a profitable department post-Jackson, the majority of claims will have to succeed, given there is no longer the flexibility of CFA uplifts to cushion the shortfalls of the cases that are...
Image ©iStockphoto.com/funky-data
Employers' Liability Insurance: More Risk of Personal Liability for Directors in Scotland - Will McIntosh & Fiona Beal, Brodies LLP
22/05/14. Following a recent Scottish court decision, there is now a distinction between Scotland and England as to when a director may be personally liable for his company's failure to have proper employers' liability insurance in place.
Readers will be well aware of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 ("1969 Act"). The 1969 Act applies to employers in Great Britain. Employers commit an offence if they do not have in place insurance for bodily injuries and disease suffered by employees arising out of and in the course of their employment.
An apprentice joiner was injured as a result of an accident at work involving an electrically powered...
Image ©iStockphoto.com/brians101
The "Anomalous" Fatal Accidents Act - Charles Bagot, Hardwicke
18/05/14. Those are not my words but the view expressed on 2 April by Lord Sumption on the effective over-compensation which can result under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 (“the FAA”). The other Supreme Court Justices agreed with him. He expressed the view that, “What is clear is that sections 3 and 4 [of the FAA] mark a departure from the ordinary principles of assessment in English law, which can fairly be described as anomalous”. This was in a Supreme Court case which had to decide whether in a foreign accident case to apply German principles of assessment of damages (effectively full compensation) or English law in the form of the FAA: Cox v Ergo Versicherung AG (formerly known as Victoria) [2014] UKSC 22.
Ironically, the German principle, which the Supreme Court ultimately found to apply, was identical to the English law principle of damages assessment, in the absence of any other statutory rules to the contrary, such as the FAA. That familiar principle is to put the Claimant in the same financial position, neither better nor worse, as she would have been in if, in that case, her husband had not been fatally injured by the Defendant’s negligence. The same principle of course applies to compensation under the English common law. This takes account of (rather than ignoring to the Claimant’s benefit) any mitigation of loss and credit must be given for receipts referable to the original loss, subject to the limited exceptions such as...
Image ©iStockphoto.com/mf-guddyx
More Articles...
- Fatal Accidents Act 1976 Does Not Apply in Foreign Law Cases - Sarah Crowther, 3 Hare Court
- Costs Budgeting’s ‘First Birthday’: 2014 Update - Tom Gibson, Outer Temple Chambers
- Vicarious Liability for Associate or Locum Clinicians: Whetstone v Medical Protection Society Ltd - Paul Stagg, 1 Chancery Lane
- Accidents at Work: The TUC and the Myth of The Compensation Culture - Gordon Exall, Zenith Chambers
![Appeal judge rules that credit hire company has no costs liability following a finding of fundamental dishonesty in personal injury case: RSA v. Fastrack Solutions Limited [2023] 4 WLUK 92 - David Bowden, Erimus Chambers](/content/images/resized/images/stories/carkeys_72_72.jpg)
