Weekend video: 'The First World Problems Rap'

Book recommendation: 'Facts and Figures 2011/12'

Now in its 16th edition, this collection of tables enables you to effortlessly calculate special damages and claims for loss of earnings in personal injury cases. Facts & Figures 2011/12:

• Brings together all the information in one volume, to assist you in assessing special damages information quickly, easily and efficiently


• Provides access to the latest, up-to-date material and includes the 6th edition of the Ogden tables


• Ensures accuracy in the calculation of special damages and claims for loss of earnings


• Provides you with up-to-date financial and statistical information


• Helps with the production of schedules and counter-schedules


• Widely used across the profession and frequently cited in court


• Includes: Life, multiplier and discount tables, Earnings tables, Various interest tables, Price tables, Investment tables, Tax and insurance tables, Benefits, allowances and charges, Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority Multipliers Table, Decimal Years Table


• Provides clearer, easier to use Carer Rates tables, Nanny cost-to-client rates to be re-calculated in accordance with formula used for carer rates and a simplification of Tables C-1 Earnings Losses

Available from Amazon.co.uk

RJW sold for £53.8m - the floodgates are opening and barristers chambers may be the next to fall...

The Law Gazette has reported that Russel Jones and Walker solicitors along with the Claims Direct claims management brand have been sold to an Australian firm for £53.8m. This comes just a few days after the Financial Times reported that Quindell Portfolio agreed to pay £19.3m for Silverbeck Rymer solicitors. With the move towards alternative business structures now under way this can only be the start of what promises to be a massive consolidation within the legal market, particularly for solicitors firms. What will be interesting to watch is if any firms decide to make any approaches for barristers chambers in the same way. In just the same way that the partners in Goldman Sachs had a one-off windfall when that company was sold so some chambers might be tempted to start hawking themselves around in the hope of a similar type of windfall (albeit on a much small scale). Once that happens, maybe the Inns might start to investigate lease-back arrangements and the like again raising the possibility of windfalls for barristers. Watch this space!

Government to turn blind eye to asbestos in schools...

Asbestos is a killer and whilst the dangers have been known about for years it was only in 1985 that blue and brown asbestos was finally banned and white asbestos made it through until 1999 before getting the same treatment. Tragically, its prevalence has caused numerous deaths for many years now from, for example, the mesothelioma or asbestosis. Last year the Supreme Court held that Diane Williams had been negligently exposed to asbestos at school which ultimately led to her tragic death from mesothelioma in 2009. In particular the court accepted medical evidence in which it was said that there was no safe level of exposure to asbestos. Yet despite this, The Independent on Sunday has a report that in the forthcoming audit of our 23,000 school buildings around the country, an investigation into the use of asbestos and its risks in these schools is not even going to take place. The implication is that there is a risk that such a survey might give rise to the need to remedy numerous buildings at great cost. Very frightening indeed and it is to be hoped that the government will re-think this important detail.

Weekend video: 'Jerusalem' by Jez Butterworth'

Online challenges to the right to a fair trial

The Guardian are reporting that a juror has been jailed for having conducted online research into a defendant and then shared the results of that research with the rest of the jury. The principle of protecting the fairness of the trial as of paramount importance makes complete sense. But what the case raises is how very difficult it is to police such fairness. In the past, simply by controlling the press through the contempt of court laws this would have eliminated the vast majority of the risk associated with people reading prejudicial material. But when everyone has access to google, Twitter and Facebook it becomes a lot more difficult to enforce unless I guess they started having juries locked away in complete isolation. But imagine that possibility for jurors facing a fraud trial which could potentially last several months. It really is a difficult conundrum all ways round and I really don't know what the answer is going to be. But however difficult the principle of a fair trial is becoming to protect we must never lose sight of its over-riding importance to our system of justice.

Book recommendation: 'A Certain Justice' by P D James

Although A Certain Justice begins with news of a murder, the victim isn't set to die for another four weeks. Publicly respected but privately loathed, Venetia Aldridge has far more enemies than a brilliant London criminal lawyer should--and at least one of them is determined to do her in. Venetia plies her superior trade in courts that harbour "the illusion that the passions of men were susceptible to order and control," but her past and private life are exceedingly unruly. Her married lover is intent on giving her up; her daughter loathes her; her fellow barristers are determined that she not become the next head of chambers. Even the cleaning woman seems to have something on her. The outline alone of this complex novel would take pages (as would the eclectic inventory of players), but P. D. James makes us admire far more than her brilliantly developed plot. James in fact creates a crowded gallery of surprisingly decent suspects, along with one suitably vile creature--who happens to be Aldridge's last client. A superior murder mystery, A Certain Justice is also a gripping anatomy of wild justice. James's characters can be overcome by hate, but she is equally concerned with love's manifestations--human, divine, destructive, and healing.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

Weekend video: 'Amistad'

Transport Committee fails in its overly generalised analysis of whiplash claims

The House of Commons Transport Committee have very recently published its follow up report on the cost of motor insurance. One of the matters it covered was whiplash claims and it said in particular that it was "not convinced that a diagnosis [of whiplash] unsupported by further evidence of injury or personal inconvenience arising from the injury should be sufficient for a claim to be settled. I n our view the bar to receiving compensation in whiplash cases should be raised." it also said that if the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill did not reduce the number of claims then "there would be a strong case to consider primary legislation to require objective evidence of a whiplash injury". As someone who spent ten years practising as a personal injury barrister and representing both sides of the industry, the immediate problem with this sweeping statement is what type of objective evidence they are talking about? Whiplash is notoriously difficult to identify objectively and may well be one of the reasons why it also sometimes gets associated with fraud cases. But medical evidence is currently required to prove a personal injury in any event. So, perhaps the point may have been better made by encouraging more rigorous examination by GPs and consultant orthopaedic surgeons during the period of the injury. But for what it's worth, even this can raise difficulties since the doctors that a patient initially visits are not usually for the purposes of litigation but instead for treatment. In those circumstances, their duty is to the health and welfare of the patient and not an insurance company. It's a great shame that having examined all of the evidence the Committee didn't make a more detailed analysis of this issue rather than leaving the impression of somewhat shooting from the hip. 

Book recommendation: 'Wind, Sand and Stars' by Antoine Saint-Exupery

In 1926 de Saint-Exupéry began flying for the pioneering airline Latécoère - later known as Aéropostale - opening up the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. WIND, SAND AND STARS is drawn from this experience. Interweaving encounters with nomadic Arabs and other adventures into a richly textured autobiographical narrative which includes the extraordinary story of his crash in the Libyan Desert in 1936, and his miraculous survival. 'Self-discovery comes when a man measures himself against an obstacle,' writes Saint-Exupéry. This book he explores the transcendent perceptions that arise when life is tested to its limits. Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poetic meditation.

Available from Amazon.co.uk