PI Brief Update

30 November 2007 Summary

NEWSLETTER

LAW JOURNAL

Personal Injury Articles

Credit Hire: Claiming a Contribution for delay by a Garage - Aidan Ellis, 1 Temple Gardens
Defendant insurers rarely take the opportunity to join a garage into proceedings. This article explores whether this is a viable option for Defendants.

RTAs and recovering the cost of a hire vehicle - Alejandra Hormaeche, Tanfield Chambers
The spate of litigation arising out of recovering the cost of hiring a temporary replacement vehicle following a road traffic accident shows no signs of abating, with the Court of Appeal recently offering further guidance in Douglas Bee v Carl Jenson [2007].

Discounts to Hourly Rates in Gratuitous Care Claims - Paul Stagg, 1 Chancery Lane
This article suggests that the current standard discounts applied to hourly rates used to calculate gratuitous care claims may be assessed on the basis of an erroneous assumption as to the tax consequences of making an award for gratuitous care.

Deaths in Hospital: Gross or Simple Negligence? - Eliot Woolf & Christopher Wilson-Smith QC, Outer Temple Chambers
The circumstances in which a Coroner should hold an enhanced, Middleton type investigation into the ‘means and circumstances’ in which a death in hospital had occurred as opposed to the narrower, Jamieson type investigation into the means by which the death arose has fallen into consideration in a number of recent cases.

Clinical Negligence Articles

MRSA, routes to liability - Cara Guthrie, Outer Temple Chambers
MRSA - difficult cases but it is possible to establish liability?

Medico-Legal Articles, Edited by Dr Hugh Koch

The use of video surveillance material - Dr George Harrison, University Hospital Birmingham
The use of video surveillance material in cases which hinge upon the amount of pain which is suffered by a claimant is still controversial.

Patterns of pain: are our assumptions on the wiring of the nervous system accurate? - Dr George Harrison, University Hospital Birmingham
The development of chronic pain often produces patterns of pain in a way that does not fall within our normal concepts of the presumed neurological wiring of the central nervous system. It is not unknown for experts in orthopaedics or neurology to state that the pain is made up because the pattern of it does not fit in with the accepted wisdom of the normal patterns of pain, which have been taught for many years.

Charon QC

Charon QC, Nov 2007
Free Speech