Master of the Rolls: Jackson will address “compensation culture”
The Jackson reforms will help tackle the public perception of a “compensation culture”, the Master of the Rolls has predicted.
Delivering this year’s Holdsworth Club Lecture, on the subject of Compensation Culture: Fact or Fantasy?, Lord Justice Dyson said the perception of a compensation culture “has real, and negative, consequences” but is not “as grounded in reality as has been suggested”.
Referring to the government’s recent consultation on whiplash claims, he noted that claims have increased by a third in the last three years but said there are sometimes spates of activity, such as the one-time “epidemic” of pavement slips in Liverpool. Some of these cases may be fraudulent and do not therefore contribute to a possible compensation culture, he said.
Currently, the high cost of defending litigation leads some defendants to settle unmeritorious claims. Dyson LJ said the Jackson reforms, due to come into force on Monday, will address this by increasing judicial control over costs and reforming “no win, no fee” cases.
“Through bringing costs under control, and removing the perverse incentives to settle claims lacking in merit, we should be able to make substantial improvements to this aspect of the system,” he said.
“The pressure to settle such claims should be reduced, if not eliminated.”
He also called on the government to provide greater public legal education.
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