October 2012 #109 – Law Journals

Taxing Times: A year in the life

Janet Sayers recaps the main challenges to face clinical negligence lawyers this year It remains to be seen how the details of the Assisted Dying Bill will develop, particularly in light of the High Court’s decision in the Nicklinson case not to depart from the established principle that assisted death is murder.This last year has …

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CPR: Beware Part 36

Edward Rowntree looks at the need to comply with the letter of the rules Despite its original attempt to make a Part 36 offer, the claimant was able to resile from it by reason of its own failure to comply with the technicalities. Although the heading to this article ought to be unnecessary, it is …

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Reducing Costs: Review of the low-value RTA Process

Kate Parker explores small but statistically significant reductions in mean general damages, mean costs and mean speed of settlement The likelihood of cases in areas where liability is often hotly in dispute, such as clinical negligence and employer’s liability exiting the portal is plainly much greater. Professor Fenn’s Review, ‘Evaluating the Low Value Road Traffic …

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: Who has to prove what in road traffic claims?

John McDonald discusses the requisite burden of proof What is the position when res ipsa loquitur applies? One view is that its effect is merely to raise an inference of negligence, which requires the defendant to give an explanation of how the accident could have happened without his negligence. It is trite law that in …

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Costs: Jackson reforms

Robert Connelly considers the long and winding road to Jackson For small firms, the decision to waive or reduce the capped success fee will be an important commercial decision as high volume practices will be better placed to make such concessions and still compete in the PI market place. As April 2013 looms ever nearer, …

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Clinical Negligence: Double standards?

Julian Matthews examines an anomaly that should not exist In equating impotence with reproductive ability, as the JSB Guidelines does, perpetuates a blurring of categories of injury that, in this century, is no longer warranted. There should be awards for the loss of ability to procreate. In assessing damages for clinical negligence that leads to …

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RTAs: Agony of the moment

Stephanie Prior assesses whether legal liability attaches when drivers take emergency avoiding action The defendant claimed that his welfare, as a human being, should override that of wild birds and it was therefore unreasonable to perform an emergency stop to save the birds when it put him at harm.Many claims arise each year involving injuries …

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Fee Agreements: Cheap at half the price

Julian Chamberlayne and Kerie Receveur review recent case law on retrospective and discounted conditional fee agreements In Designers Guild, counsel were not prepared to match their instructing solicitors and enter into a full no win, no fee CFA, but instead agreed to act only on the basis that leading and junior counsel would be paid …

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