THE COURT PROCESS

This is broken down into a number of steps

Unless there are limitation issues we will send a letter setting out your case in detail on the issues of negligence and causation and giving a broad assessment of the value.  

The defendants should respond within three months either accepting or denying your claim and if denying your claim explaining why.  

The reality is that the defendants rarely, if ever, respond within 3 months and so we may well need to involve the Court to set enforceable deadlines.  

Either after the defendant has responded to the letter of claim, or before if the defendant is delaying its response, we will arrange for a specialist barrister to prepare the formal court document setting out your claim in detail and for your claim to be issued by the Court and formally served on the defendant.  

This is a key step as it moves your claim to one where the Court can set deadlines with which the defendants have to comply and if settlement can not be agreed to eventual trial.  

Here the defendants set out in detail which parts of your claim they accept and which they deny.  It is with the defence that we know, or should know, how the defendants are approaching your case.  

Here the defendants serve statements from your treating medical practitioners while we serve statements from you and witnesses.  

These statements together with the medical records set out the factual evidence.  There are nearly always differences in how you and your treating medical practitioners remember events.  The Court will need to decide whose recollection it prefers if your case goes all the way to trial.

With you we will consider how different findings of fact by the Court affect the strength of your case and the prospects of the Court making different findings of fact.  

These issues are then discussed with your experts in order to assist in the finalisation of their reports before they are sent to the defendants.  

It is now that we are able really to see the strength of the defence to your claim.  The experts duty is to the Court to provide a fair and unpartisan report.  

Having assessed the maximum level of compensation the Court might award and finalised our experts reports we send a detailed valuation and expert reports to the defendants.

12 weeks or so after we have sent our valuation to the defendants we receive the defendants assessment of the least a Court would award if you succeeded in your claim together with their reports.  

3 months or so before trial the experts have telephone meetings with their opposite numbers to discuss their areas of agreement and disagreement. The aim of these meetings is to ensure that each side's case is fully understood by the other side and so maximise the chances of agreement being reached without the need for trial.

If we can not agree settlement with the defendants your case will come to trial.

More than 90% of cases are resolved without the need for trial.  

A specialist legal team is more likely to be able to reach settlement than an inexperienced legal team as the legal issues, strengths and weaknesses of the case are better understood allowing proper settlement negotiations to take place.  

An inexperienced team may push a bad point to trial and lose, or miss a good point and recommend an unacceptably low settlement offer be accepted.