Help - No win no fee car claim taking forever!

Crazy_Jamie

Mummy_Jo wrote: »

My claim was a little complex - not massively so and it took over 7 years to resolve so have patience. These things are rarely over quickly. They may make you an offer too and you will have to decide whether to accept it or not. It is usually a pathetic amount. They may also try and pin a % of the blame on to you as well. My advice is if you were in the right then stick to your guns and stay in it for the long haul.

Good Luck with it all. I hope it doesn't take as long as mine did!

Jo

Even in this industry, where things have a habit of dragging on, seven years is an unusually long length of time. Sounds to me like for one reason or another you were unlucky with how long that dragged on. You would only normally expect really high value claims to last that long, and even then most of them settle well within that length of time.

SolicitorMidlands

7 years!? I settled a 2002 case recently but the client didn't instruct anyone until 2005 so that was the reason for the length of time.

7 years seems an unusually long period of time.

beachbeth

Mummy_Jo wrote: »

They may make you an offer too and you will have to decide whether to accept it or not. It is usually a pathetic amount. They may also try and pin a % of the blame on to you as well. My advice is if you were in the right then stick to your guns and stay in it for the long haul.

I certainly will. My daughter was driving and I was a passenger and she was driving slowly and carefully around a roundabout. She wasn't indicating but for some reason this chap either assumed we were taking the next exit or he thought he could cut in front of us to take the exit himself. He ended up pushing us down that exit. My daughter had whiplash as well as back trouble, had to have time off work and my husband also had to drive her to university for a while until she was better. She was part of an equestrian team at uni too and had to pull out. I just had whiplash and so didn't suffer as much as her.

The whole thing makes me so angry that I would never accept a % of the blame because it just wasn't our fault. Even if this means it taking longer.

beachbeth

Well, its been decided in our favour because of the non-communication of the other party!:T We had a letter on Saturday. Now its up to the court to set a date when they will decide how much compensation we are going to get. How long this will take I don't know but at least we are another step further to this being all over with!

Crazy_Jamie

beachbeth wrote: »

Well, its been decided in our favour because of the non-communication of the other party!:T We had a letter on Saturday. Now its up to the court to set a date when they will decide how much compensation we are going to get. How long this will take I don't know but at least we are another step further to this being all over with!

I assume that's as a result of Judgment in Default being entered. In which case that is good, but don't count your chickens yet. Once the other side do actually wake up, they can apply to have that set aside, something which is actually fairly common. I'm not going to go into the law that applies, but suffice to say that it is not a certainty at this point that things are going to move swiftly on.

Assuming that no application is made to set things aside, things will be more or less done and dusted after the disposal hearing, after which an order will be made compelling the other side to pay the compensation (normally within 14 days). So once a date is set for that the end will (hopefully) be in sight

Quentin

beachbeth wrote: »

Well, its been decided in our favour because of the non-communication of the other party!:T

This doesn't mean the case is finalised. You have only won without any court hearing due to the defendant not replying to the summons in the time allowed.

This often happens. Defendants can easily get this judgement set aside on the grounds they were unaware of the court case. (Courts send summonses out via ordinary mail, so rarely object to applications to set aside on these grounds).

If your defendant does intend to pay up, then they will certainly apply for the judgement to be set aside as otherwise they end up with a ccj against them.

Setting aside the judgement isn't an appeal, if successful it means the case will continue, and the defendant be allowed time to submit a defence which your side can then decide whether or not to continue with the case. Then a date for a hearing is set.

All this buys more time for the matter to be resolved by negotiation between both sides without court intervention.