Claims managers will exploit small claims increase, APIL president warns
'Insurers will waste no time trying to cut lawyers out of the system'
Claims management companies will "waste no time exploiting any increase in the small claims track", Matthew Stockwell, the new president of APIL has said.
Stockwell recalled how leading personal injury lawyer Patrick Allen warned in 1994 that increasing the small claims limit for personal injury cases would put claimants "at a grave disadvantage."
The MoJ's consultation on whiplash claims, which closed last month, proposes raising the limit to 5,000 either just for whiplash cases or for all personal injury claims.
Karl Tonks, the previous president of APIL, predicted that this could lead to "catastrophic delays" in the courts.
Speaking at APIL's annual conference near Newport yesterday, Stockwell said: "We also know that insurers will waste no time trying to cut lawyers out of the system altogether, under settling claims and treating people unfairly.
"We have to continue to demonstrate the benefits of independent, specialist advice and be proud of what we do.
"Personal injury law is unrecognisable from its origins, but the reputation of personal injury litigation has suffered over recent years.
"Are we going to allow others to undo what APIL members have achieved over the past 23 years or are we going to take this opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the cause of the injured person?
"We do have a choice about how our services are perceived in the future."
Stockwell said the government had not heeded APIL's concerns, but against this "unhappy background" personal injury lawyers had to adapt and find new ways of serving injured people.
He singled out the discount rate, currently the subject of a second consultation launched in February, and said that if the government did not get it right it would constitute "one of the gravest injustices of all".
Stockwell added: "It would not be about reducing fraud; it would not be about controlling the cost of litigation. An attack on the discount rate would simply amount to robbing seriously injured people of the damages they so desperately need."