Can the Personal Injury Sector Survive the Recent Spate of Attacks on the Industry?

In recent months the personal injury sector of law has been beleaguered by attacks and new regulations which all seem custom built to hamper the effectiveness of compensation solicitors nationwide and place the ball back in the court of big businesses and insurance companies when it comes to obtaining justice for those who have been legitimately injured in an accident that wasn't their fault.

Amongst the recent measure and proposals, there is the study led by Lord Young which seems to indicate that there is some sort of "compensation culture" in Britain today and that health and safety laws need to be re-examined to prevent what he claims to be frivolous personal injury lawsuits. On top of this there is also the proposed insurer's code that will allow insurance companies even more scope for compensating accident victims before they have had the chance to seek out independent personal injury advice, often leading to the claimant gaining less compensation than they are entitled to.

Both of these proposals could have massive ramifications for the personal injury sector if they see the light of day, with Lord Young's report being especially worrying as he is an ex-MP who served under Margaret Thatcher and will thus likely hold some sway with the current Conservative government. His findings display and concise and clear anti-compensation bias, with every fault in current health and safety regulations being linked to compensation claimants in some form or another.

Amongst the claims in the report are that health and safety rules have made restaurants too scared to stock toothpicks for fear that customers will instantly sue them if they somehow manage to injure themselves. This throws an instant negative light on personal injury solicitors that is simply not warranted. Any reputable compensation solicitor would throw a case such as this out immediately and, while there are horror stories involving successful yet frivolous claims, most who practice personal injury law would see such claims as both a massive risk and a fallacy on the part of the claimant. By making links such as these early in the report, Lord Young attaches an immediate negative connotation to the personal injury section, blithely ignoring the fact that this arm of law exists to gain compensation and justice for those who have been affected by the actions of others and instead placing a focus on the apparent negative culture that this access to justice has created.

He also claims that compensation claims have risen over the past decade, and segues this into an attack on the previous Labour Government while again making the implication that this is a bad thing. While there is already dispute as to the accuracy of these figures, with the head of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) coming out and saying the figures aren't accurate, the real underlying issue here is that Lord Young is again making the implication that personal injury claims are a bad thing. If every claim was something as ridiculous as a person suing a restaurant after injuring themselves with a toothpick then this viewpoint would have some justification. However the vast, vast majority of claims are completely legitimate and often involve people whose lives have been significantly affected or even ruined thanks to the negligence of others. The report leaves one to wonder if Lord Young would hold the same view of the compensation sector if he was involved in some form of accident that left him in a condition where he was unable to earn his previous wage.

To further compound these issues, the long running dispute between personal injury solicitors and insurance companies looking to pay out as little as possible on insurance claims looks set to take another bad turn after insurance companies announced plans to extend the third party capture policy, in which insurance companies look to offer compensation to a victim of an accident almost immediately after the incident in an attempt to pre-empt personal injury solicitors, and legitimise it by giving it a set of regulations.

The fallacies involved in this practice shouldn't need to be pointed out, be it the obvious conflict of interest inside an insurance company claiming to be looking out for its clients while simultaneously trying to save as much money on any payouts it makes or the fact that insurance companies are targeting road traffic accident victims as soon as possible, when they are likely not in a state to make fully informed decisions and have yet to have digested what has happened to them.

The insurance companies claim this is all bunk of course. They say the practice reduces the lengthy and costly compensation process while providing the victim with the same results. They claim that the practice will be regulated, however remain hazy as to the extent of this regulation, only going so far as to state that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) would be "very interested" in anybody who doesn't follow the regulations they set forth.

Both of these proposals are extremely troubling for anybody in the personal injury sector for very obvious reasons. While nothing has yet been set in stone, it is obvious the ramifications this could have, especially on smaller firms who rely on smaller claims, such as those made by many road traffic accident victims, to sustain themselves. It will be interesting to see if the current Tory/Lib Dem coalition government will accept these changes, however it appears that with the recent changes to the Road Traffic Accident system being reviewed but not yet altered, it seems entirely likely that we haven't heard the last of these damaging regulation proposals.

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