Dublin No Win No Fee Solicitors Review Personal Injury Claims Culture

Being in a car accident is bad enough, but the idea of legal suits due to the accident makes it more stressful. Your physical and emotional injury is coupled with the burden brought about by medical bills for ongoing medical problems make it even more emotionally and mentally draining, aside from being costly. Amidst all the physical and emotional caucus you are experiencing, there are claims to be attended to. It makes it even more toxic.

These claims are special and needs a solicitor to make sure that:

• It is handled properly and successfully,

• That the compensation is calculated correctly and the correct amount is arrived at,

• That while undergoing rehabilitation, the claimant’s needs are catered to,

It takes years to finalize claims, and some claims for medical negligence also take years to finish. This is one factor that makes them difficult to handle and costly to undertake. Read more about it at https://www.irishtimes.com/business/are-no-win-no-fee-offers-a-legal-pest-or-the-last-line-of-defence-1.1052235.

What Are The Legal Costs?

It is usually common for successful No Win, No Fee claims that a claimant upon a success, gives a solicitor a percentage amount of 25% his compensation. The amount most often totals to 25% of the total claimed amount. Before April 2013, claimants get 100% of the compensation, but when the law changed, claimants lose to solicitor fees a part of his compensation. Before the passage of LASPO Act 2012, plaintiffs used to pay for all the expenses, e.g., solicitor fees, when they take their cases to court.

This change in the law was expected to encourage an increased competition between solicitors. It was meant to be that more solicitors would lower their success fees – the more competitive, the lower the fees. This way the claimants will get to keep most of his compensation.

Apparently, this expectation did not happen. Since the law was changed, no real competition emerged – majority of the solicitors still carried charges of 25% which is the maximum fee allowed.

Where It All Started

The developing compensation culture led to the creation of PIAB in 2000s and implementation of CLCA in 2004. PIAB was intended to limit the count of personal injury claims in court. With PIAB, before a plaintiff can file a case in court, it must first file it with PIAB where an attempt for mediation is done between parties and evaluate the claim and allow claimant to pursue action without legal costs.

However, PIAB has no authority to declare a liability so that when a case fails to be resolved at PIAB, it is then forwarded as a legal action in court. Since establishment of PIAB, indicators show that half of all cases brought to PIAB went through to court, claimants refused to settle at PIAB. CLCA 2004, on the other hand, tackled the costs and fraud in insurances and changed the way of processing personal injury actions.

While both methods were successful in combatting compensation culture, it was not enough to eradicate it. Setbacks were experienced where the topmost complaint was that the compensation for damages is excessively high. An additional major issue is that of the courts being flooded with personal injury cases, causing delays in court proceedings and therefore service of justice. Some cases filed were even proved to be bizarre cases – see here.

Success Fees

Success fees took place when became key part to the No Win, No fee” approach when legal aid was abolished. Without Legal Aid some claimants could not afford to take matters to court. This would have been a violation of the English Law principle of giving everyone a fair chance to achieve justice.

The “No Win, No Fee’ approach became the solution to the issue. In this approach, everybody regardless of economic status can take matters to court without facing the risk of being charged with solicitor fees despite unsuccessful claims. This means solicitors get no fees when the case is unsuccessful, but when these are successful they get their fees. The success fees which they lost in other unsuccessful claims can just be recovered from successful ones.

In going into a “no win, no fee” agreement, the solicitor’s depth of knowledge is important. It is imperative that they are able to handle all aspects of the claim. A quittance would mean high claim success rates, which also means fairer settlement for claimants. Learn about no win no fee solicitors in Dublin and how a quittance can help claimants.

Personal injury cases are the most difficult to handle and legislate as they appear to go beyond the government’s scope of influence. Apparently, there are some limitations which prevented the government from properly legislating to combat these issues.