Follow this link to read Lord Justice Jackson’s review of civil costs final report. Feel free to comment below. I have extracted the relevant personal injury parts of the executive summary and will comment on them in future posts.
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Proposals from the executive summary:
- General damages to be increased by 10%.
- Success fees and ATE premiums should cease to be recoverable from unsuccessful parties (ie the defendants usually in PI cases. (The Lord giveth then he taketh away!).
- Success fees (which will have to be paid by the claimant) be capped at 25% of damages, excluding any damages referable to future care or future losses.
- Ban referral fees.
- Unsuccessful claimants do not have to pay the defendant’s costs (making ATE insurance for defendant’s costs unnecessary – see 2 above).
- Fixed fast track costs (recommends £12,000 pre-trial limit).
- Lawyers should be allowed to offer contingency fee agreements – not clear if that it is to be limited to certain types of contentious business. so may or may not include personal injury.
- Claimant recovers extra 10% if defendant fails to beat part 36 offer (what happens to Carver? – it should be overturned says Jackson).
- Working party set up to design a neutral “Colossus” for calculating general damages.
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OK I think that’s enough to be going on with. I will read the chapters in detail and comment in later posts. I will also review what he has to say about mediation but here is one quote as a taster from page 387 to whet the appetite :
There is a widespread belief that mediation is not suitable for personal injury cases. This belief is incorrect. Mediation is capable of arriving at a reasonable outcome in many personal injury cases, and bringing satisfaction to the parties in the process. However, it is essential that such mediations are carried out by mediators with specialist experience of personal injuries litigation.
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