The Better Regulation Taskforce, in its report Better Routes to Redress, has come to the support of the much-maligned personal injury lawyer. We are not, it seems, vultures picking over the carrion of the nation’s public services, nor vampires sucking the blood from the helpless and turning the nation’s young into self-pitying handout junkies. Rather, we are servants of a modern, self-confident citizenry, who, when injured, seek no more than their legal rights. There is no out-of-control compensation culture. That is all a figment of the imagination of certain sections of the press (you can no doubt guess which sections). The number of personal injury claims went down last year, not up. Even the lady who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself deserved her payout: just what we have been saying for a long time.
The taskforce points to several factors tending to restrain the number of compensation claims and the level of damages in the English system, most of them well recognised. Conservative judges set awards, not exuberant juries. Punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages are rarely available. The prospect of an adverse costs order has a sobering effect on those thinking of embarking on speculative litigation. And while the taskforce has criticisms of some of the methods of the claims management companies, it suggests that these concerns could be met by light-touch regulation and some self restraint rather than anything more drastic.
