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NLJ this week: More action needed on product liability scandals

28 July 2023
Issue: 8035 / Categories: Legal News , Public , Health & safety , Inquests
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In product liability claims, including those involving medical safety issues, ‘many claimants have had to endure decades of litigation, campaigning and lobbying in order to make their voices heard’, Hausfeld lawyers Sarah Moore, partner, Stuart Warmington, senior associate, and Lily Parmar, legal assistant, write in this week’s NLJ.

A prime example is the infected blood scandal, in which despite litigation and a public inquiry that is ongoing, many affected individuals do not have redress decades later.

Claimants tend to have an eye on redress mechanisms beyond litigation, such as public inquiries and reviews, due to issues around limitation, funding, caselaw and evidential challenges. The UK ‘is good at creating listening forums: 83 public inquiries have been opened since 1990’, Moore, Warmington and Parmar write, but whether lessons are learned and recommendations acted upon is less clear.

The COVID-19 Inquiry is one of the biggest inquiries to be held. As the authors assert, however, no matter how efficient an inquiry is, it’s up to the government of the day whether anything gets done.

The authors call for greater accountability and express support for the creation of a central redress agency, as recommended by the Cumberlege Report but subsequently rejected by the government. 

Read the full article here.

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NEWS
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
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