July 2013 Contents
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| Personal Injury Articles | |
 Little Things to Know About the Revised Detailed Assessment Procedure - Matthew Hoe, Jaggards & Taylor Rose Law The Jackson reforms changed costs overnight. Some of the changes were heralded with widespread commentary, and continue to receive it. There are other changes, critical to practitioners, that have received much less commentary. Lack of awareness may lead to expensive mistakes. |
 Editorial: Opoku v Tintas: Court of Appeal on Period of Hire - Aidan Ellis, Temple Garden Chambers Challenging the period of hire in a credit hire case has always been a difficult issue for Insurers. In many credit hire cases it is the period of hire more than the daily rate that Insurers instinctively want to challenge... |
 The Expanded Portal and Predictable Costs Regimes - Matthew Hoe, Jaggards & Taylor Rose Law The new fixed cost rules were published on Friday 12th July, in the Civil Procedure (Amendment No 6) Rules 2013 (SI 2013/1695). The fixed costs will apply to most (but not all) personal injury claims in the scope the fast track. |
 Lights, Camera... Appeal! - Simon Readhead QC, 1 Chancery Lane It's Channel 4's fault! Was it just coincidence that on 10 July, the day after "The Murder Trial" was first screened on television, the Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2013 was published? |
 Compliance With Court Orders: Fons HF v Corporal Ltd & Pillar Securitisation [2013] - Paul Stanton Another of the early cases on "relief from sanctions" has been reported on 9th May. Fons raised the question of whether or not HH Judge Pelling QC should extend the time for filing of witness statements-notwithstanding neither (active) party had complied with two earlier case management Orders dealing with the deadline for filing. |
 Litigants in Person, the Judges and You! - Simon Readhead QC, 1 Chancery Lane According to the government's own figures, 623,000 of the 1,000,000 people who previously received public funding each year ceased to be eligible for such assistance when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012 came into force on 1 April 2013. |
 What Is a Witness Statement? - Thomas Crockett, 1 Chancery Lane What is a witness statement? What is it for? And what should it contain? These are all questions which ought to be simple-enough to answer. However frequently it appears to those involved in litigation that the simple-enough answers are not always correct! Witness statements not infrequently go wildly beyond... |
 Jackson: When Is a Deadline for an Order Not 'Written in Stone'? - Ian Miller, 1 Chancery Lane The case of Re Atrium Training Services Limited [2013] EWHC 1562 (Ch) is the latest judgment from the High Court which considers the new rules. The judge was faced with an application to extend time to comply with a court order for a massive disclosure exercise. This came against a background of... |
 New Supreme Court Judgment: Alternative Service Outside the Jurisdiction, How Exorbitant Is That? - Clive Freedman QC, Littleton Chambers Clive Freedman QC of Littleton Chambers together with Tim Penny instructed by PCB Litigation LLP appeared for the successful appellants in an appeal to the Supreme Court in the case of Abela & Ors v Baadarani [2013] UKSC 44. Judgment was handed down on 26 June 2013... |
 Lloyd v Arriva Southern Counties Limited - Marcus Weatherby, Pattinson Brewer This recent liability only decision concerned a young cleaner/driver who was employed by the Defendant bus company who was injured when alighting from a bus that she had been on for the purpose of cleaning it. |
 Is Your Client's Pi Award at Risk on Divorce? - Margaret Hatwood, Anthony Gold Solicitors The short answer to this is, yes, and now more so than ever before. The fuzzy discretion of the family courts has now intruded into the personal injury lawyer's arena. A recent award has been so generous to the spouse of a personal injury claimant to the extent that over half his personal injury award was paid to his wife... |
 Wilson v GP Haden Trading as Clyne Farm Centre [2013] EWHC 1211 (Swift J, QBD) - Geoffrey Weddell, 1 Chancery Lane On 1st August 2009 the claimant, who is a scout leader, was leading a troop of scouts over a series of obstacles on an adventure course at the defendant's premises. One of the obstacles was a so-called Burma bridge which involved crossing a rope bridge at a height of some 3 metres and then sliding down a fireman's pole to ground level. The claimant failed to grip the pole properly and... |
 Transport Select Committee: Why It's Our Duty to Fight - Philip Waters, Camps Solicitors The latest Transport Select Committee hearing into whiplash has yet again allowed the ABI and insurance companies to issue figures to media and government on how much whiplash claims allegedly add onto motor insurance policies every year. However these figures are nine years old and completely out of date... |
 Payment by Outcome: Don't Tell the Expert - Ian Gascoigne, Eversheds Like an unwanted Christmas present returned to the store with its gift receipt on any 28th December, the inception of damages-based agreements has not brought joy. We have been told that they are unworkable, principally because... |
 General Damages Come Under Attack - Julie Carlisle, Boyes Turner In the first ever issue of Modern Claims Magazine in May 2013 James Dalton, Assistant Director of the ABI, suggested that it is time for a public policy debate about whether low speed shunts in supermarket car parks should attract "the current levels" of compensation awarded to the non-fault driver... |
 The ATE Market in This Early Post-LASPO World - Matthew Amey, TheJudge Limited The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 ('LASPO'), implemented on 1 April 2013, abolished the recoverability of After the Event ("ATE") insurance premiums... |
 What Next for ATE? - Alexandra Anderson, RPC The introduction of the Jackson Reforms has fundamentally changed the landscape of the litigation market. No more can a claimant take out After The Event Insurance at whatever cost insurers might choose to charge, safe in the knowledge that, so long as the claim does not fail, the defendant will be... |
 Shouting About Cauda Equina Syndrome - Mehmooda Duke, Moosa-Duke Solicitors For many years my firm has been specialising in Cauda Equina Syndrome Cases. This year we have made Cauda Equina Syndrome UK our charity of 2013. Cauda Equina Syndrome (CES) is a sometimes unheard of condition. The lack of awareness about this condition in the medical profession is such that the Founder Chair Trustee of the charity, Annie Glover, also a sufferer, has been working tirelessly since... |
 Predicting the Future - Bill Braithwaite QC, Head of Exchange Chambers Predicting the future is always difficult, but that's what personal injury lawyers in catastrophic claims have to do all the time. This is why, in my opinion, forming a close, long-term relationship between the claimant, his or her family, and the legal team is so important. |
 Never Assume When It Comes to Injuries - Bill Braithwaite QC, Head of Exchange Chambers Still on predicting the future, it is so important not to assume that people are the same as other people. You do sometimes hear, even now when we should all know better, phrases like "a standard paraplegic"... |
 Summary of Recent Cases, July 2013 Here is a summary of the recent notable court cases over the past month. |
 PI Practitioner, July 2013 Each issue a particular topic is highlighted, citing some of the useful cases and other materials in that area. This month: Disclosure of previous expert reports where a party seeks to change experts within the same field. |
| Medico-Legal Articles, Edited by Dr Hugh Koch | |
 Lack of Post-Accident GP Attendance: a Poor Indicator of Psychological Symptom Severity in Adults - Dr Jacquie Hetherton, Clinical Psychologist, Hugh Koch Associates It is often assumed that there is a linear relationship between symptom severity and GP attendance. Thus a lack of GP attendance is taken to denote mild symptoms even though a claimant may report symptoms that are severe and disabling. In my clinical experience there are multiple factors that disrupt the relationship between symptom severity and GP attendance. |
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Welcome to the July 2013 issue of PI Brief Update Law Journal. Click the relevant links below to read the articles and take the CPD quiz. Please remember to fill in our quick feedback form after you have finished. 
![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)
