Costs: When is a disease not a disease?

Paul Jones discusses fixed success fees ‘The key issue, so held the judge, was that there was no express definition of a disease with CPR 45.23. In the absence of a particular definition, the court could only interpret disease within the ordinary meaning of that word.’ Fixed success fees have resulted in far fewer cases …
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Case Report: Ghaith v Indesit Company UK Ltd [2012] EWCA Civ 642

Liability; manual handling accidents ‘The reasoning of this case provides encouraging reading for claimants and their advisers and dispiriting reading for defendants and theirs.’ This case provides a telling illustration of the stringency of the Manual Handling (Operations) Regulations 1992 and the evidential difficulties that a defendant is likely to face rebutting liability under such …
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Fatal Accident Claims: The past is a foreign country

David Regan considers the basis of awards and common pitfalls ‘The Fatal Accidents Act 1976 serves a very important purpose: to protect the rights of dependants who are the secondary victims of torts that have resulted in death.’ The opening line of LP Hartley’s The Go-Between (1953), ‘The past is a foreign country, they do …
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RTAs: Costs in MoJ protocol cases

Philip Davy sets out an overview of costs at Stages 1, 2 and 3 of the Pre-Action Protocol for Low-Value Personal Injury Claims in Road Traffic Accidents ‘Increasingly, both parties see an oral hearing as providing a better opportunity to influence the judge’s decision on quantum.’Personal injury practitioners are becoming increasingly familiar with the Pre-Action …
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Travel Claims: At last, some good news for tour operators?

Sarah Prager looks at the decision of the Court of Appeal in Harrison v Jagged Globe ‘There was no way of imposing liability on the tour operator for the negligence of their sub-contractors, and the claim against the defendant tour operator must fail.’The Court of Appeal has recently given judgment in the case of Harrison …
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Asbestos: Bad parenting

Anna Macey reports on a parent company that has been held liable to an employee of a subsidiary for negligent asbestos exposure The claimant, Mr Chandler, worked for Cape Products (Cape) for 18 months over two brief periods between 1959 and 1962. While working there he was exposed to significant amounts of asbestos dust and …
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Minor Head Injury And Concussion: A review of the evidence

Dr Tracey Ryan-Morgan examines the effects of mild traumatic brain injury ‘There are brain changes in mild traumatic brain injury, but these are not a precursor to permanent cognitive deficits. Indeed, MTBI is classically defined as an essentially reversible syndrome without any detectable pathology’. The issue of what constitutes a minor head injury, and what …
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