No win, no fee

While generally it is true to say that solicitors are incapable of ever being wrong, I do have to question this solicitors take on a case that went against him.

A conditional fee arrangement allows a solicitor to charge more than his usual fee if he wins a case and not to charge at all if he doesn't win; they are better known as "no win, no fee" cases.

The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 sets out very clearly what is required to make a valid CFA.  Section 58(3)(a) says, "It must be in writing".  I don't provide CFAs (because s. 58 of the CLSA bars their use in criminal cases); however, it took me less than 2 minutes to work out that the arrangement described in that article is invalid and to find the law that states it to be invalid... so I am surprised that a solicitor with 32-years experience would find the judge's ruling to be "absurd".  I can only assume that he has been mis-quoted.

Comments

  1. Mike22 September 2011 at 22:09

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown6 August 2012 at 07:48

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Laywers ashford kent12 November 2012 at 17:09

    In my opinion while the term 'no win no fee' is now commonly recognised, most people still do not know precisely what it means, and how it affects personal injury claims.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are items referred to in s.9’s as exhibits bound to be served?

  Background - CPS served a witness statement on me that exhibited two BWV clips that are potentially relevant to the Crown’s case and may have some relevance to the defence case insofar as they are likely to show the lighting and weather at the time events happened. Somebody has listed the clips as unused material rather than putting them in the exhibits folder that accompanies the served evidence. This raised an interesting (to me anyway) question about whether a party who exhibits an item in a statement is bound to serve it on their opponent. At court the judge took the view that the Crown were at liberty to classify items exhibited in s9s as unused material if they chose not to rely upon them in evidence. I took the view that if they are exhibited then they must be served along with the witness statement that exhibits the item and that the solution to a situation where the Crown say they are now unused is to edit the witness statement to remove the reference, by agreement with the
More gibberish >>

Driving without insurance

Image
Insurance is a contract that remains in force until it expires or is cancelled As you may, or may not, know I specialise in motoring law and most of my work involves defending people accused of drink driving . With the drink driving often come other road traffic offences such as driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. It’s driving without insurance I want to talk about today because I think far too many police officers, solicitors, barristers and judges miss a key legal point when looking at these cases. I’ve received prosecution papers today for somebody accused of driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. The no insurance element is claim that the suspect did not tell the insurer about the disqualification. In his statement, the police officers says, “ [I] contacted [the insurer] who called me back informing me they would not consider the insurance policy valid as there were no convictions disclosed.” Looks like an open an
More gibberish >>

National Identity Cards

Image
A mock up of a British National Identity Card Following the Second World War, Britain called for help from the people of the Commonwealth to come and fill thousands of job vacancies. Many answered the call and came to be known as the Windrush Generation after named the MV Empire Windrush, which docked in Tilbury on the 22 nd June 1948 bringing the first workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The Home Office inevitably screwed up and caused a huge number of problems for members of the Windrush Generation. But their story is not the subject of this blog. Instead, I want to look at a side issue that has raised its weary head once again: ID cards. Alan Johnson and Charles Clarke, both former Home Secretaries, have begun a call for ID cards as the solution to the troubles of undocumented British citizens who have not had their status regularised. ID cards pop up every few years and I’ve no doubt that eventually we’ll have a compulsory piece of plastic foisted upon us that
More gibberish >>