End Of No Win No Fee Working Class Screwed Again

pinkshoes

Good! It's about time a stop was put to compensation culture and people expecting a £1000 pay out for a broken nail!

Whiplash is over-rated! The best treatment is movement, and in the majority of cases it only aches for a few days! My worst injury was caused by the seatbelt where it locked over my hip bone (driver of car behind dozed off at the wheel and hit my stationary car at about 40mph!), but thankfully the driver's insurance paid for all my physio, and I was compensated for money lost for the time off work I had to take for appointments, a few train tickets etc...

My "compensation" was exactly what my out of pocket expenses were, which is the way it should be.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

ukjoel wrote: »

Most drivers have legal cover built into policies so this rule will have very little impact on whiplash claims.

Yes, but the more times that frivolous claims are made which activate the legal cover and the costs that incurs inevitably leads to an increase in premiums. You dont think someones £500 per year would cover this do you?

PZH

Good - about time they stopped this practice.

Councils waste vast amounts of public money fighting stupid non-existant claims. :mad:

I once saw a program that said the minimum cost of defense was £10,000 and councils often settle out of court because it was cheaper in the long run - even though there was NO evidence of liability of the claim in the first place.

moonrakerz

The OP - what a load of hysterical nonsense over an eminently sensible move !

Oh - and it forgot to blame Maggie too ...............

niklepic

These changes don't only affect RTA and PI claims. What about more severe claims? Say your child suffers from debilitating brain damage as a result of midwifes completely ignoring a falling heart rate on CTG trace during birth. You have to go to a no win no fee solicitor as a result of the cut backs in the legal aid system. After protracted litigation you are awarded compensation for future care and treatment yet you then have to give your solicitor 25% of damages. You are then unable to pay for that care for the life of your child.

trinity_enigma

niklepic wrote: »

These changes don't only affect RTA and PI claims. What about more severe claims? Say your child suffers from debilitating brain damage as a result of midwifes completely ignoring a falling heart rate on CTG trace during birth. You have to go to a no win no fee solicitor as a result of the cut backs in the legal aid system. After protracted litigation you are awarded compensation for future care and treatment yet you then have to give your solicitor 25% of damages. You are then unable to pay for that care for the life of your child.

Actually I would imagine, but cannot be certain as I haven't read into this enough, that they would only take 25% of general damages (compensation for the injury), and special damages (out of pocket expenses, plus need for care etc) would not be affected but to be honest I'm only guessing. I only say it because I know of a couple of occasions when one is effected and the other isn't.

Oopsadaisy

Don't forget that part of the package was that small claims goes from £5k to £15k. This makes it a lot less risky to take action against someone.

BlueAngelCV

MegaGun wrote: »

Kenneth Clarke will set out plans to force them to accept a 25 per cent proportion of the damages they win for their clients, rather than huge success fees.

Actually what he says is that the proportion of the damages they are allowed to take for their costs will be capped at 25% and that Claimants would be awarded a 10% uplift in general damages. So in most cases the Claimant wouldn't be any worse off.