Personal Injury

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On this page, you will find all the articles and publications for personal injury claims.

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Recent Articles

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    13/03/2024
    United Kingdom

    Court of Appeal rules that defence of illegality in civil claim is not available if not guilty of criminal offence by reason of insanity

    In Lewis-Ranwell v G4S Health Services (UK) Ltd and others [2024] EWCA Civ 138, the Court of Appeal recently held, by a majority of 2 to 1, that where a person has committed a crime, but has been found not guilty by reason of insanity, the defence of illegality will not prohibit them from claiming damages from those who were responsible for assessing their mental wellbeing at the relevant time.Whilst these circumstances are unusual, they are not novel. This Judgment is particularly important for providers of mental health services and their insurers.Background – Criminal ProceedingsOn 10...
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    07/03/2024
    United Kingdom

    University’s Duties towards Disabled Student - The University of Bristol v Dr Robert Abrahart [2024] EWHC 299

    This judgment concerns the tragic case of a second-year physics student at the University of Bristol (the “University”) who ended her own life in April 2018. She had been diagnosed with depression and social anxiety disorder, which qualifies as a disability under the Equality Act 2010 (the “Act”). As part of her course, she was required to present orally, with other students, the findings of an experiment they conducted and to answer questions about the experiment and the relevant underlying principles of physics. It was accepted as a fact that the cause of her death was...
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    20/12/2023
    United Kingdom

    Scottish QOCS case law for 2023 – the lessons learned so far

    It is two and a half years since Qualified One-Way Costs Shifting (QOCS) was introduced to personal injury claims in Scotland. There has been much interest in how case law will develop the application of QOCS, what this will mean for a defender’s ability to recover costs from a pursuer and, ultimately, for the way in which proceedings are conducted. Following a spate of judgments over the last 12 months, we look at the lessons learned so far.Before 30 June 2021, the long-standing default position on expenses (costs) in almost all civil litigation in Scotland was that “expenses follow...
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    07/12/2023
    United Kingdom

    Group Litigation Orders not always the appropriate method to resolve multiple claims

    The High Court rejected an application for a Group Litigation Order (GLO) for military noise induced hearing loss (mNIHL) claims from a claimant firm due to the lack of utility of a GLO. The lack of utility was caused mainly by the applicant claimant firm’s wholesale failure to comply with the requirements set out in CR PD19B for obtaining a GLO.  The application was supported by the defendant but opposed by other claimant firms due to those failures.  Given the decision in Abbott and others v Ministry of Defence [2023] EWHC 2839 (KB), it is possible that, even if the requirements...
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    05/12/2023
    United Kingdom

    Jagger and others v AXA Insurance UK Plc [2023] 7 WLUK 263 – Three Strikes Not Out

    The Court has found that it was an abuse of process to rely on the evidence of an expert whose independence was in question, as well as issuing the claims for significantly less than they were later amended to (and where the increased court fee was not paid until an Unless Order was issued). However, this abuse of process did not result in the striking out of the claims.BackgroundSheffield based law firm, SSB Law, represented 1,428 litigated claims concerning the defective or inappropriate installation of cavity wall insulation. 143 of these claims were issued within the Damages Claims Portal (‘DCP’)...
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    04/12/2023
    United Kingdom

    Causation of indivisible diseases – material contribution test applies, says Court of Appeal

    In Holmes v Poeton Holdings Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 1377, the Court of Appeal has attempted to bring clarity to the notoriously slippery legal concept of “material contribution”.The judgment reviews the leading cases in some detail and provides clear guidance on an area which, the court observed, has been “bedevilled by apparent inconsistency and imprecision at the highest level on multiple occasions.” (para. 30).The case concerned an individual who alleged that his Parkinson’s Disease was caused, at least in part, by exposure to the organic solvent Trichloroethylene (TCE)...
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