No win no fee and how it has changed things

It is ten years since no win no fee rules were extended to most civil court cases, and you will have noticed a vast increase in the amount of compensation claim adverts. It hardly seems possible that only 15 years ago, claiming compensation for a personal injury would have been an uphill struggle and would most likely have resulted in little if any compensation going to the claimant.

No win no fee deals were first allowed for a range of court cases for England and Wales in 1995, and three years later a move was made to extend these to all civil cases, with the exception of action in family courts.
Then minister, Geoff Hoon, said at the time: ´No win, no fee conditional agreements will result in better access to justice. In future, the question of whether one gets one´s case to court will no longer depend on whether one can afford it, but on whether one´s case is a strong one.´

The 1999 Access to Justice Act meant that judges would make the losing side shoulder the extra costs associated with conditional fee cases (no win, no fee). Since the year 2000, when the Access to Justice Act came into force, many negative press stories have appeared berating ´money grabbing solicitors´ and the ´compensation claim culture.´ However, Martin Bare, formerly president of the Association for Personal Injury Lawyers denies this, saying: ´There is no gravy train. The perception arises because people don´t think that for the cases that you win, there´s another you lose, for which you get nothing.´

Most of the blame must lie with claim management firms who are not staffed by solicitors but middlemen who pass clients onto solicitors for a fee. Many of these management firms advertise widely, and have created the belief amongst the public that there is now a massive ´compensation culture´ in the UK. The press love a good compensation story, and will splash reports of claimants who have slipped on a petal, grape or banana because it makes good headlines. But this type of publicity can have an adverse affect on the claimants who may have broken hips, arms or legs and are unable to continue working.

Solicitors deny that no win, no fee leads to more frivolous cases coming to light, as they act as a filter, knowing that every case that doesn´t make it to court or does not reach a settlement is a financial loss to the firm. Energy and time still has to be spent on the initial claims, whether they reach court or not.

The BBC news website covered the following story which relate to Personal Injury, Holiday Accidents and Illness, Road Traffic Accidents and Accidents in the workplace.

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