I called them today…ye, u r rite…their attitude showed completely they rnt interested to my claim…n put me through to a funny woman from NewLaw solicitors company…
But now I wonder if I hav to stick with the solicitor they put me through?? I havnt sign contract with any solicitor yet…if I decide go for any solicitors company…do I need to let carol Nash know which solicitor I’ve selected??
If I go for white Dalton…if it works out 50/50 at the end…does that means a lose? So no fee?? N if 50/50…I wil jus hav to phone up carol Nash n claim for the pay to that driver??
New Law get a lot of complaints because the client (you) is simply a number in their sausage factory and win or lose they still get paid by the insurers, so they really don’t give a t@ss.
McCams is an accident management firm which although licenced by the Ministry of Justice is otherwise unregulated, and whilst the may offer a conditional fee agreement (proper name for no win no fee), unlike a law firm (which is regulated) there is nothing to stop them taking money from you when the case settles. Most commonly it is usually for things they forgot to add to the schedule of costs, such hire bike costs etc, etc.
These accident management firms also tend to auction off their cases to the highest bidder, it is a tacky way of getting a referral fee which is allowed, but means that there is a cost put on the case before it even goes anywhere. I have seen some cases auctioned off for several thousand pounds when it is only worth a few thousand because although they may not make any money, they are seen as good training cases for their trainees or paralegals and keeps them occupied when things are a bit quiet, especially with the bigger firms.
A conditional Fee Agreement (no win no fee) offered by a bona fide law firms does exactly what it says on the tin.
Before a case can be accepted, a risk assessment must be carried out to establish whether on the balance of probability there is better than a 51% chance of success. If your case is accepted under a CFA, then your law firm will either at the time or before it goes to trial take out what is called a before the event insurance. This insurance costs in the region of between £500 - £1500 depending on the risk assessment paperwork, and protects the client from any nasty bills if the case were to be lost in the event it goes to trial.
The clients law firm usually pays this bill and then claims back the cost when the case settles.
Once up and running, the solicitor will run the case as normal and pay for all disbursments, for example Police accident reports, expert reports, medical records and so on.
Time is recored in units of 6 minutes, so 10 units is 1 hour of time and all the time spent is recorded on a case management system along with all otjer expenditure. So for example if I go and do an investigation, I will record maybe 50 units travelling (= 5 hours) and maybe 20 units (= 2 hours) attendance at the scene and will then record 70 units or 7 hours. Then whatever time I spend writing up the report, telpephone calls etc. Every fee earner involved on the case will record their time as well.
If the case settles and liability is admitted, then the client will be paid 100% of their compensation (although this may change under the guidelines proposed under the Jackson report), and your law firm will claim all their costs plus disbursments from the other side. At the moment, law firms can also charge a success fee from 10 - 100% depending on the degree of difficulty in the case, but the bottom line is that the claimant keeps all their money. This does not always happen with accident management firms.
If the case was to be lost, then the third party can claim their costs from the claimant. This is where the insurance kicks in because it will cover all the legal fees and you do not get charged a penny.
But in the same vein, your law firm also won’t get paid other than the disbursments and out of pocket expenses they spent in preparing and running your case.
This is why going with a law firm of your choice on a CFA is always a wiser choice than through an accident management firm, as legal expenses insurance will pay for a retained law firm of the insurers choosing (a panel firm) but because they get paid and use junipr lawyers regardless, they don’t really have much of an interest and their case load is so high, they cannot devot as much time to a particular case as the private non panel law firm.
The rules have been relaxed to a certain degree in that if you have legal expenses insurance, some insurers are allowing the policy holder to nominate the firm they want to represent them, but the insurers still try and make the solicitor and the client jump through hoops.
Under a no win no fee with a solicitor, the only time you are likely to be billed for any work is if -
You terminate instructions to the law firm before they have had the opportunity to recover some of their costs. In other words if you decide not to continue with the case once it has started.
Or
If it is shown that you deliberately misled your solicitor into believing the injuries or the case was more serious than it actually was.
If yo sack your law firm and pass the case to another law firm, all that happens is that your new firm will provide an undertaking to pay the old law firm their reasonable costs for work completed to date when the case settles, so under a CFA with a law firm you really have no risk or more to the point financial risk what so ever.
As to whether you use New Law or the accident management firm that is up to you, and even White Daltons halo seems to have slipped recently. They had a client who they valued the injuries at £15,000. The other side started to make a claim against the rider, and as soon as the claim came in, they told the rider to accept liability and go away.
We have the case valued at around £200,000 and liability is at least 90% against the other side against the £5,000 they are claiming, and as for the accident reconstruction expert that was instructed, well it beggars belief. And this is just one such case.
However, there is another issue, and that is that unless you have sustained injuries and it is only damage only, you may have difficulty finding a law firm prepared to take your case on.
Under the new portal system, solicitors and insurers have to be registered, and because the average fees for a damage only or fastrack case (lower value injury case) is only around £800, solicitors are not bothering to handle the lower value cases. Some will continue, but many won’t bother.
If the case is Multitrack (worth £10,000 or more) then you will have no problem getting someone to take on your case.
Hope that this has been of some help to you in understanding how a case is financed and the potential pitfalls.
That was awesome T.C. thank you for taking the time to post it up.
Yoyo, this is probably not helpful to your current predicament which I sympathise with but…
personally I don’t blame you for getting TPFT insurance as I’d imagine at your young age the ongoing premiums for fully comp would have been extortionate and would have exceeded the value of the bike in no time. Having said that before you decided on TPFT you presumably knew what was covered by the insurance…the Third Party being the other person i.e. not you…and Fire and Theft.
Invariably the amount of money you save on the insurance premiums by going TPFT eventually cancels out any potential financial benefit to be gained from Fully Comp paying out for an accident that might not happen. But this is more true for cheaper bikes as generally this means they are also cheaper to repair if things get out of shape.
The quote you have for the repairs seems high though I’m no expert- just doesn’t look that badly damaged from the photos you posted. Maybe you could ask around and see if you could get it fixed for less outside insurance and withdraw the claim. At least that way you keep your NCB and your premiums don’t go ballistic.
BTW that’s just my incoherent ramble…
T.C. is the expert on this stuff BTW as you can see from his post.
thx, T.C, really appreciate ur helps from the beginning of my accident til now and maybe further on…
jus shopped around ebay…get an estimate value for fixing my bike with some aftermarket parts or used parts…came up about 600 pounds the most… Honda dealer is such a money vampire…4800 pounds repair quote… but still…i havnt got the list of the broken parts, so it could be more than 600…
my mate jus pointed out a good point to me…he said they might say ‘filtering near the juction isn’t where the motorcycle suppose to filtering at.’
this seriously gave a bang to my head…coz i dun think i can argue back on that point…n i never thought of they might do that to against me…
so instead of it work out 50/50 in the end and increase my insurance premium…Im considering maybe i should jus repair my bike by shopping on ebay by myself and go on with my life…coz this accident has been giving my nightmare when I slp in the night (that BANG into my left leg) and cant focus on my uni during daytime…been feeling upset since accident…
if I do that…shall I phoned up that old driver and tell him about it? since I havnt receive any phone call from him or his insurance company…i dont know wut he wants to do…
if he agree on the phone…shall i get him to sign any paperwork or prob ask him to text me a msg admit he accept to let it go? jus in case he claim me back after agree with me…
been calling that old man for whole day, now he finally answered the phone…had a chat with him, his english isnt gd…but i think he got wut i meant…he said his solicitor will call me tmr…lol…so I think basicly he turned down my offer n already got himself a solicitor…
wut? 