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Peysner: Delays by insurers push up costs and merit investigation16 Feb 2011by Donald MacKenzie Legal costs expert Professor Peysner of Lincoln University Law School has published research commissioned by the National Accident Helpline (NAH) in which he shows that costs caused by defendant (liable insurer) delays are six times more expensive than delays due to other factors. While he cautions against interpreting his findings as exactly representative of national trends given that his data set was limited, he argues that more research into the causes of these delays is needed and that addressing these causes should be a part of any changes to the costs regime as part of the implementation of the Jackson Report recommendations reforms. His research found that where these delayed cases went to court, the claimant was successful in over 90%, showing that defendant delay increased court fees and the length of time until settlement. While they confirmed Jackson's finding that for every £1 paid in damages, £1.80 was paid in legal costs, their analysis of the NAH data ueed for part of the research showed that the amount of costs incurred was not only linked to the overall time taken to pursue a case to conclusion but also to the amount of defendant delay involved. This is an issue that we have flagged up before as a cause of increased costs for car insurance - but it has not previously been priced. Peysner's research team found that defendant delay cost £57.83 per day compared to £8.49 for other unspecified causes of delay. As a former chairman of the Civil Justice Council’s costs sub-committee and a leading national academic on legal costs, Peysner's findings and recommendations are significant but it is unlikely that they will change the governement's position on their proposed Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) changes. |
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