October 2017 Contents
 Welcome to the October 2017 issue of PI Brief Update Law Journal. Click the relevant links below to read the articles. CPD Note that there are no new monthly CPD quizzes since the SRA and the BSB have both updated their CPD schemes to eliminate this requirement. Reading PIBULJ articles can still help to meet your CPD needs. For further details see our CPD Information page.
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 FREE BOOK CHAPTER: The Challenge: The SRA And the Compliance Agenda (from 'A Practical Guide to Compliance for Personal Injury Firms Working With Claims Management Companies' by Paul Bennett) Compliance basics - You may think this is obvious, but every day I advise law firms who have failed to step back and challenge their own way of working. For compliance to be effective you need to take a helicopter view and view it from an external perspective... |
 Jackson in Action: Case Law - Marcus Davies, DWF LLP In our regular monthly round up of cases we look at the effects of the changes to the Civil Procedure Rules under the Jackson Reforms... |
 Editorial: Understanding the Number of Dishonest Claims - Aidan Ellis, Temple Garden Chambers For a number of years in personal injury litigation, issues arising from dishonest or exaggerated claims have been growing in importance and profile. Not a week seems to pass without an article in the national news drawing attention to the number of dishonest claims. Understanding the true number of fraudulent claims is important, not least because it informs policy decisions in this area of law. But it is difficult objectively to assess the scale of the problem, not least due to difficulties of definition or perception... |
 FREE BOOK SAMPLE: Knowledge of the Animal's Characteristics: S.2(2)(c) Animals Act (from 'A Practical Guide to Personal Injury Claims Involving Animals' by Jonathan Hand) Paragraph (c) of s.2(2) is concerned with the keeper's knowledge of the animal's characteristics as identified under paragraph (b). It requires either actual knowledge of the relevant characteristics on the part of the keeper, or actual knowledge on the part of another person which is imputed to the keeper in two limited situations, as explained below... |
 FREE BOOK SAMPLE: Primary Victims: Cases Involving Physical Injury (from 'A Practical Guide to Psychiatric Claims in Personal Injury' by Liam Ryan) When first considering if a claim for psychiatric injury is worth perusing, it's fair to say that a legal practitioner will rarely have all the evidence that they need for a conclusive opinion on prospects of success. There is going to be a fair amount of guess work, and also a number of Judgment calls based on experience.... |
 Expert Evidence and Experts' Duties in Clinical Negligence Cases - Kirsten Wall, Leigh Day As increasing numbers of clinical negligence cases are reaching trial, so are the number of medical experts being called on to give evidence. More and more judgments are flagging up the flaws in their evidence and for all litigators creating an ever growing list of issues to make sure your experts get right... |
 Could This Case Be the End of Failure to Take Into Care Claims? - Malcolm Johnson, BL Claims Judgment awaited in the case of CN & GN v Poole Borough Council. Failure to take into care claims are typically brought by children whose predicament has become known to social services, but who have been left in that predicament i.e. with abuse parents... |
 FREE BOOK CHAPTER: The Structure Of the Care Act 2014 (from 'Introduction to the Law of Community Care in England and Wales' by Alan Robinson) 1. General principles - The Act set out to regularise the confusing collection of statutes which governed community care in England, which are described above in Part A. The Care Act 2014 regulates the provision of services in England (but not in Wales) from April 2015... |
 FREE BOOK SAMPLE: from 'Practical Mediation'' by Jonathan Dingle with John Sephton Mediation is now is a key form of what many commentators call Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). The 'alternative' here is to having a decision imposed by a judge in court. Thus mediation is advanced as a consensual process, based on self-determination, that involves the participants (or 'parties') in the dispute meeting (generally in person but sometimes through various online technologies) with a neutral third person. These participants may or may not be joined by their lawyers, advisers, or various supporters... |
 Approval of Success Fee Deduction From Damages for a Protected Party - Richard Lowery, Express Solicitors The Claimant was injured when the Defendant turned right from a main road into the side street which the Claimant was crossing and collided with the Claimant. The Claimant sustained a substantial head injury... |
 Are Pi Firms Blazing a Marketing Trail? - Qamar Anwar, First4Lawyers The world around us continues to change at a rapid pace and artificial intelligence, voice search, programmatic marketing and mobile marketing are already being embraced by various industries. However, the legal sector isn't particularly well known for marketing innovation or for being early adopters, but do personal injury firms fare any better? |
 Summary of Recent Cases, October 2017 Here is a summary of the recent notable court cases over the past month... |
 PI Practitioner, October 2017 Each issue a particular topic is highlighted, citing some of the useful cases and other materials in that area. This month: Review of the Discount Rate and Changes Going Forward... |
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| An Update from North of the Border, Edited by Kate Donachie, Brodies LLP | |
 Court of Session Offers Useful Guidance in the Assessment of Damages for Fatal Claims - Lauren Baillie, Brodies In Manson v Henry Robb Ltd [2017] CSOH 126, a recent judgement from the Court of Session, Lord Clarke rejected the use of a tariff system to determine damages in fatal claims under Section 4(3) of the Damages (Scotland) Act 2011. Instead he carefully considered issues such as life expectancy, family relationships and the duration of the deceased's suffering to determine the appropriate level of award... |
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| Medico-Legal Articles, Edited by Dr Hugh Koch | |
 Conflict Resolution Psychology and Civil Litigation - Dr Hugh Koch, Hugh Koch Associates Following previous articles on how psychology impinges on the civil law process (1,2,3), this outline illustrates possible ways in which the psychology of conflict resolution can apply to medico-legal activity in civil compensation cases and be explored more substantively in a later paper... |
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| Clinical Negligence Medicine by Dr Mark Burgin | |
 Short Notes on Allergies 2017 - Dr Mark Burgin Dr Mark Burgin BM BCh (oxon) MRCGP considers the elements that should be included in a primer for clinical negligence cases involving allergies... |
 Short Notes on Pain Control 2017 - Dr Mark Burgin Dr Mark Burgin BM BCh (oxon) MRCGP considers the elements that should be included in a primer for clinical negligence cases involving pain control... |
 What is a Low Value Generalist Screening Report? 2017 - Dr Mark Burgin Dr Mark Burgin BM BCh (oxon) MRCGP explains how McKenzie friends can access the powerful new technique for managing clinical negligence cases... |
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