Life must be getting tough for the 'no win no pay' suburban litigation solicitor when their legal brothers on the bench won't play the game.
The slip and fall case - once a staple of the personal injuries lawyer and the bane of local councils - has been virtually wiped from the litigation landscape.At least eight verdicts in favour of plaintiffs have been reversed on appeal in the past year as judges adopt tougher lines on what constitutes negligence.
With the majority of parliamentarians coming from a legal background, it's devilishly hard to reform legal practices that directly effects the income of the legal profession. NSW Premier Carr (a non lawyer) deserves a lot of credit for legal reform, firstly in the area of property conveyancing, and in tort reform.
Another article, this time in the business section of the Sydney Morning Herald illustrates what's wrong with adversarial litigation.
Shareholders of James Hardie Industries would be better off donating funds to asbestos victims because of the uncertainty of future law suits, the company said yesterday.
James Hardie (JH), a company that used to manufacture asbestos building materials, is under fire because it's alledged they restructured the business to avoid liability for asbestos related injury.
The approach of just paying out compensation to the victims rather than go through the courts benefits everyone except the lawyers. It would be cheaper for JH, saving on their legal costs and by providing smaller payouts, as the victims could settle for less and be no worse off because they wouldn't lose half the proceeds to pay their legal reps. The victims and families wouldn't have to go through the protracted stress of lengthy court proceedings.
The answer to this whole litigation mess is to have a national no fault insurance scheme that minimises the layers' roles except in extreme cases of criminal negligence.
