Urgent help please for Personal Injury Claim

[Willow75]

Every solicitor firm has said that they won't take on the case from another solicitor so I don't think that we have any choice unless there is anyone on here that would like to take a look at the case and we will pay for their time.

[islandgirl]

Non-expert in this area, just my thoughts: it is a catch 22 I guess because you have to pay 8k to continue with a solicitor who wants to quit but if you do discontinue presumably you have to pay the other side's legal costs (is that right, experts?). It is a terrible dilemma. Is the only hope that the expert witness takes the stand and is able to explain sufficiently what he meant?

[Willow75]

Apparently if we pull out now then we don't have to pay the Defendants costs.
if we take it to the pre-trial hearing and the judge throws it out because he thinks that we can't prove causation then we could end up paying the defence fess of about £15k

[atticus]

Apparently if we pull out now then we don't have to pay the Defendants costs.
if we take it to the pre-trial hearing and the judge throws it out because he thinks that we can't prove causation then we could end up paying the defence fess of about £15k

Think about that, and read Counsel's advice carefully. Is the risk worth taking?

[K147]

I don't know where you are with this now but I read it trying to think of how I could add something maybe only in a limited way from my claims experience. If the solicitors are engaging the expert on a dual basis with a duty to the court, as is normally the case, it strikes me as incumbent that the solicitor has sufficient experience in the area of construction / bannisters etc to be able to consider good chances of success at the outset and take a view on liability at that point. Occupiers Liability law, in common law negligence and around issues of foreseeability, once all accident reports / incident reports are to hand and the solicitor can consult the advice of construction people before taking on a case. The expert is bound to the court, but ultimately you pay for him. I would be looking at how this has happened from your solicitors point of view and how they might have let this happen, and I don't think you are in difficulty. I once helped a friend deal with a claim and the expert was appalling simply because of split allegiances and another expert was simply able to present the claim as would be common to a common interpretation of inspection. If they haven't risk assessed inspection adequately and the risk of a potential accident is high then normally in law it steers the duty of foreseeability to be higher. Applying common sense ideas normally results in there never being one expert view anyway. I would be trying to to get a pro bono expert - explain your situation and see if you can get another set of eyes on it. Some injury lawyers are good, but often personal injury lawyers have big caseloads and they just deal with cases as correspondence comes up in a kind of 'money for old rope' way such that when cases like this come along they can give up easily. This could be just as much an issue with the solicitor too.

[K147]

Also isn't there a vicarious liability of the school angle. Not sure if that would apply, would have to research from case law. But surely too the solicitors would have tried to cover the case by understanding that if the report would have been moot on causation, could they tackle the duty of care of the school to the knowledge of tom foolery by pupils that could lead to an accident. I am taking it your husband went to the school as a contractor or he worked there?

[Manxman]

Oh dear. Are the posts from K147 generated by AI?

They're unreadable without paragraph breaks and have the form of what you might expect from a sentient being, but the content is rubbish...

This forum really needs better protection from spa.mming and "robot" attacks