Solicitors not to blame over culture of claims for injury

I SUSPECT that Bob Watson (Yorkshire Post, June 16) has never actually been involved with personal injury claims and gets his information from press statements by publicity seeking MPs and insurance company representatives.

If someone makes a claim for trivial injuries, those that a Judge would consider worth no more than £1,000, he does not get his legal fees paid by his opponent, and no one in his right mind would ask a solicitor would to take such a claim on, knowing that most or all of his compensation would be eaten up in legal costs.

It’s the severity of the injury that dictates how much a defendant should pay by way of compensation, and in this country damages are historically low. A brief press report rarely gives full details of the severity of an injury, and the lawyers and insurers always obtain a medical report to assist in assessing damages.

In his press release, James Wharton, the MP for Stockton South, criticised an award of £11,000 made to a young boy who had a cup of boiling tea spilt over him by a clumsy teacher. Such a award would only be made where the child was left with a permanent and fairly severe facial scar, not for a short-lived reddening of the cheeks. The MP’s press release did not give an accurate or fair picture.

However I am to an extent in agreement with your correspondent’s criticism of the TV and press advertisements, which are usually run not by solicitors but by claims companies who then sell the leads on to solicitors.

While they make people aware of their right to claim, the style of most of the adverts is irritating and trivialises the whole concept of compensation for negligence causing physical injury.

Let’s get back to the days when people would go directly to a local solicitor, rather than to a middleman, and not just for accident claims but for conveyancing, wills and all the other services we can offer.

From; John Wilson, Wilsons Solicitors, New Road Side, Horsforth, Leeds.

YOUR letter from my namesake and fellow solicitor, Simon Wilson, cries crocodile tears.

The Government has not, as he alleges, published proposals that are designed to make accident victims pay legal costs out of their compensation.

They just say that. The real reason for the proposals is to stop lawyers charging these extra fees at all by forcing them to justify them to their own clients rather than simply sending a fat bill to an insurance company, thereby spreading the burden out amongst all of us premium paying folk.

These extra fees, known as success fees or conditional or contingency fees in the jargon, did not even exist up to about 15 years or so ago. I do not recall noticing many lawyers on the breadline back then. It was the introduction of these extra fees which brought about the avalanche of tacky advertising for accident claims which the Government is now belatedly trying to do something about.

I think the legal profession’s interests would be immeasurably improved by calling a spade a spade and being more honest with the public, but various very large professional snouts have been so deeply into the trough that they don’t seem to know how to get out of it.