Not at any price

Writing in the Law Society’s Gazette of 2 June, Andrew Underwood, president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers argued for a behavioural code of practice for multi-tracked cases which the personal injury pre-action protocol fails to address. The aim should be to resolve issues of disagreement while promoting rehabilitation and fair and timely compensation where justified. His comments about the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers were far from conciliatory. ‘No society can afford compensation at any price, and there is no facility for the blank cheque that many claimant lawyers may like to see’; the suggestion of Allan Gore, the president of APIL, that the increased cost of claims should be passed to the ‘polluters’ who caused them was no more than fine rhetoric; the antagonistic attitude of some claimant lawyers in the claims environment struck at the heart of the rehabilitation problem; there could only be real change when claimant lawyers ensured that the interests they pursued were those of their clients, not themselves.