No win, no fee?????????

abandonded

bod1467 wrote: »

lose = no win, thus no win = no fee, or win = fee.

By your thought train, and using the above (correct) logic, if you WIN then there is a fee. In this case the fee is charged to the other party. if you lose then the company takes the hit (they insure against such events I believe).

Sorry to bring this up again but saw a programme on tv the other day where 2 people entered into 'no win-no fee' contracts.
1. The firm won £15+ for the client then sent her a bill for £2000+.
2 Same firm won £600+ for client and sent bill for £900+

Think the programme was rip-off Britain but not sure. Anyway, I think that the researcher was the same guy from the Cowboy Builders programme.

cabbage

Usually with no win no fee there is an insurance policy you take out I think it's called a conditional fee agreement.

I know if you withdraw from a no win no fee before its settled you have to pay the solicitors fees. If they say its not worth going ahead then usually there is no fee but if you decide to carry on then you could be liable for the fees

Crazy_Jamie

cabbage wrote: »

Usually with no win no fee there is an insurance policy you take out I think it's called a conditional fee agreement.

Conditional Fee Agreements are the technical name for the way that 'no win no fee' cases are funded. The insurance policy you're referring to is an ATE Policy that is normally taken out at the same time as the CFA is entered in to. This is common practice in Personal Injury claims.

What InsideInsurance said is correct regarding the fees and such. In addition previously it was common for these sorts of firms to argue that PPI cases should be allocated to the fast track even though they were of small claims value simply because of the complexity of the cases. Once upon a time (before the banks started admitting widespread fault and setting aside the money for damages) courts readily accepted that argument, and as such cases were regularly allocated to the fast track despite being low value. As such the firms could then recover their costs from the other side if they won.

Of course things are different now. Judges have now been issued with guidance saying that PPI claims are suitable for the small claims track, so the above tactic no longer works. It is fair to say that from a claims management firm perspective PPI claims are now not nearly as lucrative as they used to be, and of course for limitation reasons the market will soon disappear almost entirely.