Personal Injury/Clinical Negligence

The much-anticipated hearing in Belsner was scrapped yesterday after the Court of Appeal raised the possibility that pre-action legal work was contentious business for costs purposes.

Small law firms could end up “falling or stepping away” from the clinical negligence market if fixed recoverable costs (FRC) for cases worth less than £25,000 are set too low.

The former boss of a personal injury claims management company previously jailed for contempt of court has now been convicted of failing to preserve company accounting records.

The Ministry of Justice has published a simplified guide to using the Official Injury Claim portal in the wake of a low take-up by litigants in person. But there are still big obstacles.

Those harmed by the NHS will “have to pay again by losing access to justice” as a result of government plans to introduce fixed costs, campaigners have claimed.

The government has finally published its proposals for fixed costs in low-value clinical negligence cases. Going with fees proposed by defendant representatives, it expects to save £454m over 10 years.

The number of motor injury claims reported to the Compensation Recovery Unit fell by nearly 20% last year, new figures have shown. However, the volume of clinical negligence claims increased.

A leading insurance law firm has mined its historic claims data to create an app for clients to improve estimates of how much cash to set aside at an early stage in volume personal injury claims.

The body that operates the Official Injury Claim portal is to investigate why unrepresented litigants are not using the service. They are bringing fewer than 10% of claims made through the service.

Affiniti Finance – which lent money to thousands of law firm clients – went into administration late last year after a breakdown in the relationship with its ultimate backer, which is now owed £43m.