Urgent help please for Personal Injury Claim

[Willow75]

Hi, hope you are all well.

I am hoping that someone may be able to offer some advice on an urgent personal injury claim.

My husband was injured in a local school (council owned property) in 2018 where he suffered life changing injuries..

Our solicitor informed us in November 2022 that one of our key witnesses has undermined the case when preparing the joint engineers report. (Although the engineer has said that his comments have been misinterpreted)
Our barrister has advised our solicitor to drop the case based on the engineers report.

We have just received a hand posted letter through our letterbox stating that our solicitor has served a notice of discontinuance of the no win no fee agreement.
The letter states that we can represent ourselves, pay our solicitor by the hour or drop the case.

This letter also states that a court hearing date has been set for Thursday 12th January 2023, which is the first that we have heard about this date.

I would be grateful if anyone could help as we are now worried sick as we do not have a clue what to do.

Many many thanks,

[atticus]

First of all, given that the barrister has advised against pursuing the claim, it has to be said that this does not look good.

Ask the solicitor to reply urgently saying what the hearing is about and when they knew of the date.

Has the barrister advised in writing? If so, have you seen his advice.

[Willow75]

Thank you so much for your reply, I really do appreciate you taking the time to respond.

We were shown an email from the barrister stating that he thought that our engineers comments in his report had ruined the case. But the engineer was adamant that his comments had been misinterpreted.

We are really worried now that we do not have enough time to find a new solicitor with the court date being so close.

My husband entered a school and was struck on the head by a fallen wrought iron bar from the staircase. This would have killed a child outright.
The schools engineer report stated that the staircase had not been properly maintained.
So we have always maintained a strong belief that School (or Council) were to blame.

We are so shocked at the barrister and our solicitor.

[atticus]

Can your solicitor ask the engineer to clarify his comments? CPR Part 35 gives the parties the right to ask questions of an expert about his report.

I have in the past used this to get an expert witness to correct what seemed to me to be an obvious mistake.

[Willow75]

We did ask the same question but our solicitor said that it would make the impression that he has 'guided' the engineer in what to say and that it would weaken the case even more.

I am not sure if this is because it is a joint engineers report prepared for the court ?

[Willow75]

Before the joint engineers report was issued we had a telephone meeting with our barrister and he was confident that we stood a good chance of winning the case.

It is only this one joint report by our retired engineer that has completely ruined everything, according to our solicitor.

[islandgirl]

I wonder what could have been so bad it ruined the case? How could the school or council not be to blame? Atticus offers good advice (it appears to me with no knowledge of this area)

[atticus]

I agree with islandgirl. I recommend that you find another solicitor who will be willing to look at the case with a view to taking it on. You may need to pay for the initial review.

[Willow75]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

I have made an appointment with our current solicitor for tomorrow to find out what the court hearing scheduled for next week is about.

Would we be able to change solicitor so close to the trial?

I get the impression that we are not receiving the best service from him since the barrister decided not to act for us anymore.

Could anybody here recommend a solicitor that I could contact to discuss the case with?

Many thanks

[des8]

You could look on our sister website https://justbeagle.com/ or the Law Society site https://solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk/

[Manxman]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

I have made an appointment with our current solicitor for tomorrow to find out what the court hearing scheduled for next week is about.

Would we be able to change solicitor so close to the trial?

I get the impression that we are not receiving the best service from him since the barrister decided not to act for us anymore...

Hi Willow75


I'm curious what happened?

How did your meeting with the solicitor go?

Did you resolve the issue with the engineer's report?

Did the hearing go ahead?

[Willow75]

Dear Manxman,

I apologise for the late reply, I have only just noticed it.

We are still really struggling with the claim.
Our current solicitor has advised that we drop the claim as it has no chance of succession due to the engineers report.

I am wondering if there is anyone at all on here that would take a look through the case and advise if we do have any chance of being successful.

Our solicitor seems to have lost all interest and is now being quite rude about it.

If anyone could offer any help or advice it would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,

[islandgirl]

I suppose the most obvious advice is do not pay your solicitor a penny more and get another? Ask them to look through the case and if they wish to take it on before you commit or pay anything.

[Manxman]

+1 to what islandgirl says ^^^^

Willow75 - what was the outcome of the court hearing on 12 January?

[Willow75]

Thank you so much for your reply.
I am really worried that we dont have enough time to find another solicitor.

Apparently on the 12th January it was just a 'listings' hearing so our solicitor had to just email documents to the courts and not attend.

The court have issued a General Form of Judgement Order.
it states that the case will be listed for pre-trial review on the first available date after the 12th June.

Our solicitor is scaring us by saying he thinks the case will be struck out and that we will have to pay the Defendants fees.

many thanks