Lord Justice Jackson - TOP LEVEL UPDATE

Lord Justice Jackson today published the final report to the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, on his year-long, comprehensive review of civil litigation costs. His proposals include a wide-ranging package of reforms designed to bring costs under control and make them fairer.

Significantly his recommendations are designed to ensure that overall members of the general public seeking justice do not lose out financially.  The majority of personal injury claimants will end up with more compensation under Lord Jackson's proposals.

Lord Justice Jackson's key findings and recommendations include:

The banning of ATE insurance and for solicitors / claimants to bear the costs of disbursements in lost cases

  1. Referral fees scrapped entirely (or capped at £200)
  2. No change to the small claims limit of £1k
  3. Top priority:
    1. Fixed costs to be set for ‘fast track' cases (those with a claim up to £25k) to  provide certainty of legal costs
    2. Establish an efficient and fair process for how personal injury claims are handled
  4. The current MRO agreement should remain
  5. Supporting the development of quantum assessment software, Jackson recommends a working group should be set up to establish uniform calibration for damages up to £10k

Paul Crowther, Sales and Marketing Director, said "we are delighted that the MRO agreement that took so long to negotiate and then implement has been endorsed and supported by Lord Justice Jackson's final report and we fully accept the need for this agreement to be regularly reviewed and updated. There are some areas of the report, particularly relating to solicitors paying referral fees, that I feel will be difficult, in practice, to implement but overall it is something that we as an organisation fully support"

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications_media/media_releases/2010/0210.htm

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about_judiciary/cost-review/index.htm

 

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