Thumbs down for CJC

Commenting on the Civil Justice Council’s report, Improved Access to Justice – Funding Options and Proportionate Cost, Richard Langton, vice-president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) said that the report has a hollow ring where it could have restored some sanity to the situation. Claimant lawyers have spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to recover legitimate costs over the past five years. Many personal injury firms are starting to question whether they should be involved in this work at all when payment is highly speculative in the ongoing costs war. APIL was profoundly disappointed that the issues discussed in the paper were not subject to full consultation before publication. There was no justification for an arbitrary increase in the fast-track limit to £25,000. The suggested introduction of estimates and budgeting would be disproportionate, impracticable, unfair to claimants and likely to generate unwanted satellite litigation; proposals to write benchmark costs for multi-track cases, which were even less predictable than fast-track cases, could tie the claimant solicitors’ hands whenever insurers decided to outspend victims. It would have been better to have examined outstanding fundamental issues, such as levels of conditional fee agreement/after-the-event insurance premiums, ongoing problems with legal expenses insurance, and the need to ensure that there is enough insurance available to secure the conditional fee regime in the future.