10 news A denial of justice?
At the end of March the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced the first major overhaul of our civil justice system in 15 years, writes Rick Munro, dispute resolution partner and mediator at Lamport Bassitt
Kenneth Clarke said: “With no major reforms for 15 years, the civil justice system has got out of kilter. Businesses and other people who have been sued can find that spiralling legal costs, slow court processes, unnecessary litigation and the ’no win, no fee’ structures, which mean greater payments to lawyers than to claimants, are setting them back millions of pounds each year.“
The goverment’s plans include: • Abolishing the recoverability of success fees and premiums for insurance policies that cover the risk of losing and having to pay the opponent’s costs. Under the current regime, defendants must pay these if they lose. Instead, claimants will have to pay their lawyer’s success fees and insurance premiums. • Allowing lawyers to charge their clients a percentage of the sum recovered, a system that has been operating in the USA for many years. • Raising the maximum value for small claims from £5,000 to £15,000. • Increasing the use of mediation.
The reforms appear to be ill thought out and politically motivated. The move is likely to save
the Government millions of pounds in costs arising from medical negligence claims against the NHS and claims against local authorities.
Much is made of the alleged compensation culture and bonanza of success fees paid to lawyers. This overlooks the fact that when legal aid was removed as a method of funding litigation, conditional fee agreements (no win no fee agreements) were introduced by the Government as a means of allowing those not able to afford litigation access to justice. The theory was that the success fee charged by the lawyers on the winning cases paid for those cases where the claim failed and the lawyers went unpaid. There is little or no evidence that lawyers are earning more in this way than they would if they simply charged for each and every case, win or lose.
The reforms will reduce access to justice for many people and smaller businesses and reduce substantially the compensation they receive. Many more cases will fall within the small claims threshold. In these cases, the parties will not be able to recover costs, even if successful. They will be left with the daunting prospect of trying to
Half a million reasons why you should advertise on
www.businessmag.co.uk
• Last month there were nearly half a million (493,762 to be precise) hits on our website.
• This is a record.
• The number of page views was also our best yet: 363,842 in the month of March.
• You can leverage the power of
www.businessmag.co.uk and drive traffic to your site too.
• Advertising on our website is cost-effective and will be seen by tens of thousands of people every month. • Advertising costs from just £300 a month.
• Book by the end of the month to get an extra 10% off our rates.
Email
tanya@elcot.co.uk or call 0118-9745580
www.businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – MAY 2011 Rick Munro – an accredited mediator
conduct often complicated litigation without legal assistance or having to accept that being involved in litigation is going to cost them a substantial sum that they will never recover, win or lose.
A welcome development is the increased emphasis on mediation. There will be automatic referral to mediation in small claims cases and automatic referral to mediation awareness sessions in higher- value cases. Mediation, whilst slow taking off, has been a success story and should be encouraged further but, in those cases where a settlement is not possible, it is important that access to justice is still available.
Details: Rick Munro, 023-8083-7755
rick.munro@
lamportbassitt.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48