Catastrophic brain injury claims: Assessing mental capacity

Pankaj Madan explores how a party’s capacity affects brain injury litigation ‘If a person is able to understand an explanation of the information relevant to a decision by the use of simple language, visual aids or other means, then they are not to be regarded as unable to understand the information because those adjustments have …
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Refusing medical treatment: Evidencing unreasonableness

Helena Drage considers what issues of mitigation arise when a claimant refuses a recommended course of treatment ‘When considering whether a claimant has acted reasonably or unreasonably in refusing treatment, the risk profile of the recommended intervention is likely to be balanced against what the medical evidence demonstrates to be the likely benefit conferred by …
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Conditional fee agreements: Solicitor-own client costs disputes

Andrew Hogan examines the complex issues that occur with solicitor/client success fees ‘Given the way that a success fee is traditionally calculated by reference to a percentage uplift derived from the risks of the individual case, if a solicitor proposes to charge a success fee on a different basis it is incumbent upon the solicitor …
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Costs: How it all started

Paul Jones reviews a case which illustrates that commencing notification of a claim correctly has a bearing on the costs recovered ‘Regarding the claimant’s submission that the claim was never intended to be a Portal claim, the Master held that the claimant had, in fact, made it a Portal claim by submitting a claims notification …
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Case report: Inglis v Ministry of Defence [2019] EWHC 1153 (QB)

Noise-induced hearing loss, loss of earnings, Smith v Manchester awards ‘There was no evidence that the medical advice was taken into account by the claimant’s superiors, and no steps were taken to reduce his exposure to noise.’ In Inglis v Ministry of Defence [2019], a former Royal Marine was awarded £545,766 for noise-induced hearing loss …
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Negligence: Developments in parent company liability

Harry Sheehan analyses the recent Supreme Court decision of Vedanta ‘A parent company may not only be directly liable for harm caused as a result of flawed policies or systems it has designed, but also by a failure properly to implement and enforce policies or systems it has designed even when they are not flawed.’ …
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