No Win No Fee - Blackpool

Funding by the Legal Services Commission (formerly Legal Aid) is no longer available for claims for damages for personal injury or death, business disputes, boundary and property disputes, and disputes about wills and trusts, company or partnership or defamation. In common with the Law Society and many of our colleagues we feel this is deplorable in that it effectively deprives many clients with legitimate claims of proper redress.
If you lose a case, you will usually be ordered to pay your opponent's costs unless you are legally aided. Consequently for Claimants without Legal Aid this is a great disincentive to those people who cannot afford to take that risk. The vast majority of legal aid funding is now lavished upon the Criminal sector for political reasons leaving many clients who are entitled on the face of the law to be compensated for wrongs done to them, without an effective remedy.

However, there are other forms of funding which enable many people to pursue a meritorious claim. Insurance schemes are available to fund cases. We have an agreement with Allianz-Cornhill who have authorised us to enter into insurance policies with our clients for injuries sustained in Road Traffic Accidents. These policies cost our clients nothing as the premiums are "deferred" until the conclusion of the case when they are paid by the losing party or written off by the insurer.

There are cases in which insurers are reluctant to take the risk of offering policies with deferred premiums. In such cases there are other options. These can be arrangements to either pay a premium in advance which can range between 15% and 30% of the amount of the insurance company's potential liability to pay your opponent's costs and expenses as well as your own expenses and sometimes Barrister's fees, if you lose. It is also as well to check your house or car insurance as these policies often include legal expenses insurance. However beware, as your Insurer may insist upon you using their "Panel" solicitor rather than your solicitor of choice. Other policies can sometimes be arranged to insure the preliminary steps in a claim up to a certain limit at a correspondingly lower premium. These have to be specially arranged. We have to persuade an insurer that it is worth their while as they take an understandable commercial attitude to such proposals.

No win-no fee agreements or, more properly, Conditional Fee Agreements enable us to offer effectively a free service in claims for damages in cases we consider to be sufficiently strong. The regulations covering such agreements were largely swept away on the 1st November 2005 to stop the relentless challenges to such arrangements by a hostile insurance industry which is mainly responsible for the misleading propaganda about the so called Compensation Culture. This has been repeatedly found by authoritative figures such as the Lord Chief Justice to be an unfounded myth.

For more details on no win no fee claims do feel free to contact Neil Jones in our Blackpool office.

Neil Jones - nrj@johnbudd.net

property - conveyancing, house sales and purchases, buying and leasing of business premises

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John Budd
Phoenix House
283 Church St
Blackpool
FY1 3PG

t: 01253 626557
f  01253 751055


dx: 714603 blackpool 6

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