The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) are due to be updated with many of the changes coming into force on 6th April 2009. The changes to the Rules in this 49th update can be viewed on the Ministry of Justice's website.
A significant change to the (CPR) in my line of work is to Part 26 and the allocation of cases to the small claims track, fast-track or multi-track dependent on the value of the claim.
The small claims track applies to claims excluding personal injury where the claim's value is less than £5000 or where damages for personal injury exceed £1000. This will not be changed.
The majority of personal injury claims however fall within the fast-track, this used to be for claims that fell outside of the small claims track but that did not have a financial value of more than £15,000. All claims with a value in excess of £15,000 were allocated to the multi-track.
Under the updated CPR after 6th April 2009 the fast-track financial limit will be increased to £25,000.
Working within the personal injury sector I envisage some difficulties with this change and would instead recommend an increase to the small claims track limit for personal injury claims, which has been rejected.
Firstly in relation to the increased limit for fast-track claims, a Defendant cannot currently obtain their own medical evidence in relation to the Claimant's alleged injuries unless it is a multi-track case or they make an Application to the Court. Whilst this will not be necessary in all cases, if an injury is complicated or where the Defendant has serious concerns over the nature or causation of the Claimant's injury, obtaining medical evidence from your own expert is advantageous. Unfortunately some medical experts can be biased towards the Claimant (or the Defendant) and others do not provide sufficient reports to alleviate any issues/concerns.
Taking into consideration the increase of the fast-track limit to £25,000 along with the nature and/or complexity of the injuries the Claimant would have to incur to exceed this new limit, I believe that Defendant Solicitors are likely to be disadvantaged.
In my opinion it would be more beneficial to increase the small claims track for personal injury claims. Currently the limit for these is only £1000 and taking into consideration the recent JSB guidance, only whiplash type injuries persisting for less than 1 month fall within this track. With the JSB guidelines increasing the valuations in each revision, should the Court system not increase their banding to match this?
A typical whiplash injury lasts between 6-12 months with a proportion persisting for up to 2 years post accident. With the recent JSB guidance providing for damages in the region of £2750 for a simple 12 month whiplash injury and £5000 for a 2 year whiplash it could be the case that we no longer see any personal injury claims that fall within the Small Claims Track, thus continuing to increase Defendant's Solicitors costs.
I am sure someone from the Claimant side's views would differ...
1 comment:
Whiplash injury settlements are often not easy to predict at the outset of the claims process. This is because not only is whiplash difficult to diagnose, but the severity of symptoms vary a great deal, and are often not apparent for some time. Whiplash cannot be detected by scans or x-rays, and diagnosis will usually be made on the basis of the injury and a patient’s description of the symptoms, as will the subsequent whiplash injury settlement.
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