Year 2, week 16: GravyTrain

Having used legal expenses insurance to get TheMoldies funding for one of their cases, I think that on Friday I stumbled upon a wheeze for getting even more work from it.  It all arose when I overheard Teflon (the guy who got me done for his mobile going off in court) showing off about how he’d put one of his solicitor contacts in their place over a case. 
‘It was utterly hopeless.  Can’t understand why they even bothered sending me the papers.  Must think I’m stupid.  No doctor in a million years would have supported the case so I killed it dead.  Told them it did, in no uncertain terms.  That’ll teach them for wasting my time, even if I do get paid by the legal expenses.’

Having heard his little speech, I made my excuses and went straight to the clerks room to get FanciesHimself to give me the name of said solicitor.  Twenty minutes later and I had him on the telephone.
‘I heard all about the case which you sent to Teflon and I can’t imagine why he turned it away.  Sounded pretty strong to me and you know what, I’d be very happy to provide you with a positive advice at no charge in return for which I can do the rest of the case.’
‘BabyBarista, that’s exactly the sort of commercial attitude to these cases that I was rather expecting from Teflon.  Very disappointed I was.  You’ve certainly called at the right time.  We’ve just been sent a load of high risk cases by one insurer and they all need a learned opinion before we can get billing.  You think you can handle say twenty sets of papers in the first batch?’

Of course, it was my pleasure and by 3pm on Friday the solicitor had sent them all down.  Having been trained by TheBoss, I had finished half of them by 6pm.  Despite the fact that almost all were pretty hopeless, they all ended with,
‘I can therefore advise that subject to further evidence there is a more than 50% prospect of success.’

That easy and at a straightforward £200 fee for each advice I was starting to get into TheBoss’s league for a short while.  As for the further evidence which I suggested in each case?  Why it was MrImpartial himself, good old Dr4Hire. 

All aboard the GravyTrain.

Comments

[Red]

Anyone else seeing this all end with BabyB getting his comeuppance and/or in handcuffs?

[james c]

Not if past form is any guide-someone else will end up carrying the can.

[Charon QC]

Wonderfully shocking :-)

Good stuff.... onwards and upwards.

[Old Sweat]

Some are said to have had a similar approach to legal aid in the past.

To be fair they were reinforced by the knowledge that if a legally aided Plaintiff lost the statutory protection meant they would escape the consequences of any costs order against them, so had nothing to lose. However a sucessful Defendant was on a hiding to nothing as they still had to pay their full defence costs if they won, (and had the never entirely absent risk of copping for both sides costs plus damages if it all went wrong at trial). Unsurprisingly many insurers chose to pay something on the dud claims, however thin they were, as it was the least expensive option.

Advice in legal aid cases that there was a reasonable prospect of sucess thus became a conveniently (and lucratively) self fulfilling prophecy.

Alas such practitioners ignored the commandment "Thou shalt not tear the backside out of it". Once Insurers started taking a longer view,and were actually defended some of the dodgier cases to trial, it started costing the Exchequer a few quid for the Plaintiff's abortive costs.

Net result: no legal aid for anyone and the current PI debacle, avoidable if we had all paid a little more heed to that another great unwritten rule "Thou shalt not be too clever by half",

Be warned, BB, be warned.

Happy New Year!(And keep the shennanigans coming despite the above)

Old Sweat

[Charon QC]

BB

Wonderfully evil... good stuff.

Made me laugh...

[james c]

'Some are said to have had a similar approach to legal aid in the past.'

Why the past tense, Old Sweat?