RECENT NEWS

Irish law can be applied to personal injury claims, The High Court has held. This is if the victim was injured at an English airport as it had been stipulated in the ticket contract drawn up by Ryanair. 

The claimant, flying with Ryanair to Berlin, was injured going down steps at East Midlands Airport: the terms and conditions of the ticket said that Irish law governed the agreement and how to interpret it.

Ryanair argued in court that the contract did not apply to the claim and that English law had to apply instead – hoping that the damages would be less as a result.

In Silverman v Ryanair DAC, Master McCloud said the case was significant to aviation law practitioners because it was a decision on whether an airline can disapply its own choice of law clauses. She said the airline was clearly connected with the Irish jurisdiction and that Irish law was a ‘clear and unambiguous contractual choice’ by Ryanair, so it was applicable.

It has been found that hospitals have not learnt from their mistakes due to time consuming litigation in clinical negligence claims. 

Jeremy Hunt, the chair of the House of Commons health and social care committee stated that England should follow Sweden by taking negligence out of the equation altogether and paying compensation much sooner after the harm has been caused. He also stated that the current system poses risks as it causes serious harm to hundreds of babies every year as changes are taking years to be implemented.

A disciplinary tribunal had blocked a barrister from registering for a practicing certificate for 9 months, due to charges of professional misconduct.  

This charge has come after a personal injury claim in 2019 arising from a traffic collision. The specific barrister discontinued his claim for compensation and did not explain discrepancies between his case and the other driver’s evidence. This meant that the judge found that the barrister had been dishonest.

This barrister was also found to have held himself as a practising barrister which he was not permitted to do so. Consequently, it was determined that his behaviour would likely diminish the trust and confidence the public places in people of that profession' and has been described as ‘a serious matter’. 

A solicitor was found to give untrue evidence in a claim brought under the High Court. He admitted to handing in confusing and evasive evidence. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal decided to struck him off as it believes that the protection of the public from these types of dishonesty is of great importance. 

 A litigant who has claimed that several lawyers conspired against him has been given a 2-year civil restraint order, meaning he is unable to make applications to claim without the permission of the court. These are usually given to those who have persistently issued claims without merit. 

In the case of Griffin Antiques v Brown & Ors, Mrs Justice Falk struck out negligence claims against 13 law firms due to ‘fanciful’ reasoning, therefore the courts stepped in to protect the defendants and issued a CRO. It was concluded that Mr Griffin has an obsession and would just not take no for an answer. 

A survey by personal injury firm Bolt Burdon Kemp, found that less than half of British adults would actually approach a solicitor for help. Issues which they may not come forward with include: medical negligence, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse etc, which is extremely dangerous. 

The main reason respondents being reluctant to get in touch with lawyers is the worry that they will be charged too much- 19% of adults believe this, while 11% would hesitate if something traumatic or unjust had happened to them, in case they did not have a claim they could pursue. Bolt Burdon Kemp also found that 59% of respondents think it is too expensive to access legal support.

The Supreme Court has decided on the case of Adelekun v Ho. Personal injury firms have achieved a win which has liberated them from immense cost liabilities.  

The court agreed with the claimant that the defendants costs could not be set off against her costs under the qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) scheme.

The complication faced by the Supreme Court was whether Ho could avoid paying the pre-settlement costs because it was cancelled out by the costs that Adelekun owed her under the Court of Appeal costs order. This means that the defendant must pay the full pre-settlement costs of £16,700 and cannot rely on the Court of Appeals decision.

The lead judgement stated that ‘the QOCS scheme is’ not ‘perfect,’ but ‘the best solution so far’.

Claimant lawyers and those interested in the insurance sector will have its eyes peeled on the awaiting Supreme Court decision on whether the court has jurisdiction to make a cots order in Adelekun’s favour. 

The case is based on a personal injury regarding a road traffic accident where damages were settled which included disputes regarding whether Adelekun, as a claimant should be paid fixed costs which the Court of Appeal decided. 

The important question behind this is if the court had jurisdiction to make an order which would set off the costs award the defendant received against the claimants own damages. The issue is whether these costs would erase those damages entirely.

The ruling is most likely to affect thousands of claims where a case has settled outside the fast track.

The government has once again stated that they intend to reform clinical negligence laws due to the burdensome costs it involves (£2.4bn is the cost of medical negligence right now in England) and has been described as an 'obscene siutation'. 

The parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee have recommended bringing costs down by removing the need to compensate on the basis of private healthcare provision where appropriate NHS care was available. MPs said compensation should be standardised against the national average wage to prevent ‘unjust variability’ in compensation payments.

However, Paul Rumley, chair of SCIL has stated that 'Cooperation alone will not achieve what all parties want, which is to avoid errors in the first place. The inability of the NHS and other health systems to learn from mistakes, in a consistent and blame free culture across the whole of the NHS has enormous and tragic consequences for patients and their families.’

It has been debated whether children should have the right to consent in getting a Covid vaccination without the consent on parents. Yet, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recently announced that the benefits of the COVID vaccine for 12-15-year-olds are so marginal when compared against the risks, that they are not recommending vaccination in that age range. 

However, the government stated that they reserved the right to acquire further advice and that the JCVI were not told to include analysis of potential wider societal benefits which has triggered a national discourse on consent and the concept of Gillick competence (This is when children aged 16 or over are entitled to consent to their own treatment) and possibly letting younger children consent to treatment. 

An alternative solution has been proposed to allow teachers to make the decision, who are presumed to understand their students. 

An insurer has urged the claimant personal injury sector to do more to root out fraudsters, after a fixer was jailed for orchestrating fake passenger crash claims.

Martell Randall, from Wandsworth, was jailed for six months at Kingston Crown Court earlier this month for conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. Randall organised false claims by adding phantom passengers to six genuine road traffic collisions. Police said he and his associates exploited these legitimate accidents and the claims of honest customers for their own financial gain, with the potential losses to the insurance industry running to more than £25,500.

Randall also sent further messages to fraudulent claimants on how to behave during medical examinations. Statements taken from the original claimants who were involved in the genuine incidents confirmed they had never heard of the individuals alleging to have been passengers in their vehicles at the time of the collision.

The Government has opened a public consultation on its proposals to ‘modernise’ health professional regulation (the roles of the GMC, NMC etc) in a document called Regulating health professionals.