November 2015 Contents
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Personal Injury Articles | |
![]() Risk is defined as, 'a situation involving exposure to danger'. In 2012 a study was published by Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS in England, highlighting the increased risk of death for patients admitted to hospital at weekends compared to a Wednesday. Keogh then published a report calling on the NHS to adopt 10 standards to improve the quality of care available at weekends... |
![]() Consideration of the wording between "old" and "new" Part 36 requirements when offer accepted out of time... |
![]() In this county court decision, a district judge made it clear that claimants who intend to bend the qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) rules to gain tactical advantage will be offered short shrift by the courts. This decision is a good illustration of the increasing tendency of district judges to tackle opportunistic conduct by court users robustly... |
![]() This year we have seen two major incidents of roofs being torn from buses where the vehicle has collided with trees overhanging the carriageway. The first was in February this year on the Kingsway, London where four people were injured and more recently, in August four people were taken to hospital after an incident in Bloomsbury, London... |
![]() Judy Dawson of Park Square Barristers Fraud Team, based in Yorkshire discusses the loss of QOWCS protection in fundamental dishonesty cases, with a commentary of the ongoing and evolving use of Facebook Evidence... |
![]() In a recent article looking at the role and duties of experts, and the ways in which some have fallen foul of them, I quoted from Janet Smith LJ in the case of Uren when she said: "When an expert witness makes a bad point, it damages his authority and his opinion on other potentially better points is undermined"... |
![]() When Part 36 was reformed in April, one of the amendments was aimed at addressing "cynical Part 36 offers". The court always had to consider a number of factors when deciding whether it is unjust to award the additional benefits under Part 36 but a new factor was introduced in CPR 36.17(5)(e)... |
![]() Now that costs budgeting has been a feature of civil litigation, at least on the multi-track, for some time, it ought to be possible to offer some considered assessment on the merits of the budgeting process. That it remains difficult to offer such an assessment is largely because the approach to budgeting remains inconsistent. It begins before the hearing... |
![]() A claimant is "disabled" for the purposes of Tables A - D of the Ogden Tables when s/he has an illness or disability which has or is expected to last for a year or more (or a progressive illness); which "substantially limits" the claimant's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities; and which affects the kind or amount of paid work s/he can do... |
![]() In Speirs v St George's Healthcare NHS Trust (Unreported, December 2014) a mother claimed damages for psychiatric injury which she said had arisen as a result of the shock of seeing one of her daughters who had been seriously damaged during an instrumental 'ventouse' birth. The judge dismissed the mother's claim on the grounds that she had not suffered a psychiatric injury as a result of... |
![]() The new fixed recoverable costs regime has been widely trumpeted as being exclusive to the fast track, indeed many Defendant insurance practitioners have been wary of pleading fraud, in case it results in a move to the multi-track and therefore an increase in costs. An important appeal judgment by... |
![]() Mark Holmes takes us through his case of Gamsby v Rowland, where the judge made a finding of fundamental dishonesty, even though fraud was not pleaded against the Claimant... |
![]() A claim which starts under the RTA protocol but proceeds on the multi track remains subject to the fixed recoverable costs regime. So held HHJ David Grant in the case of Qader v Esure (Unreported, 15th October 2015). The case concerned a claim for damages for personal injury arising out of an RTA... |
![]() Matthew Channon presents an analysis of the UK laws on motor insurance which seem to be non-compliant with European Law, and suggests some potential reforms... |
![]() Here I want to look at some of the issues that face the self-employed claimant when claiming loss of earnings. We also look at some of the key cases in relation to "loss of chance" in relation to the self-employed... |
![]() The Court of Appeal recently held in Alpha Rocks Solicitors v Alade [2015] EWCA Civ 685 held that the court should exercise caution in the early stages of a case in striking out the entirety of a claim on the grounds that a part had been improperly or even fraudulently exaggerated... |
![]() Let's assume; i) There was a collision about which a correct description can be given; ii) Both drivers have different accounts of the same collision; iii) The accounts given by each party cannot both be correct... |
![]() We have looked before at the approach that judges take when assessing loss of earnings in cases of badly injured young children. This issue was considered in the judgment of... |
![]() Here is a summary of the recent notable court cases over the past month. |
![]() Each issue a particular topic is highlighted, citing some of the useful cases and other materials in that area. This month: Contributory Negligence in Road Traffic Accidents Involving Pedestrians |
An Update from North of the Border, Edited by David Stihler, Brodies LLP | |
![]() Previous updates from North of the Border demonstrate that Scotland's PI claim landscape is undergoing significant change. Court reforms and a review of the costs regime have scrutinised various parts of the claims process. That includes the pre-litigation stage where unlike... |
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Medico-Legal Articles, Edited by Dr Hugh Koch | |
![]() Lawyers and experts come into contact with many claimants who complain of pain, both acute and chronic. This article reviews preliminary work on how claimants manager their 'images' of various things including pain and pain suffering... |