The Personal Injury Pre-Action Protocol

The Personal Injury Pre-Action Protocol

How the personal injury pre-action protocol and pre-action disclosure provide an effective resolution to your claim

Key to helping you bring your compensation claim is the personal injury pre-action protocol which is one of The Injury Lawyers main tools in bringing your claim to an effective conclusion.  The protocol was first recommended by Lord Woolf in his access to justice report of July 1996. Essentially its aim is to ensure that both parties to the claim disclose to each other the evidence relevant to your accident so as The Injury Lawyers can consider fully whether there are prospects to take your claim on.

To put the protocol into context in the progress of your claim, The Injury Lawyers will write to the responsible party informing them that they are representing you in your claim and will request in the letter that the responsible party pass the letter to their insurance company who then have 21 days to acknowledge your claim.

After this time the responsible party’s insurers have three months under the protocol within which to admit or deny fault for your claim. At the end of this period if they do not accept fault, they must come back with a full range of reasons why they are disputing.

This may sound straightforward in theory but unfortunately many insurers do not come back within the three month period and this can potentially slow your claim down.

However, The Injury Lawyers distinguishes itself from many other firms by countering this issue by making an application for pre-action disclosure against the other side. The implications for your claim are that an application can be made to the court (which will be heard by a judge at a hearing) which if successful will mean that the court can make an order which specifically forces the other side to disclose all the evidence they have relating to your claim and make definite comments on whether they admit or deny fault for your claim.

At The Injury Lawyers we pride ourselves on making these applications regularly and they are one of the reasons why we can provide a swift and effective outcome to your compensation claim.