LAW2020 Online: Personal Injury

Simon will review current cases, thinking and principles adopted by the courts. This will include an overview of employees injured from falls, tripping, providing safe means of access and egress and the provision of work equipment.

Simon has lectured widely to the NHS, primary care practitioners and lawyers on Covid-19 in the workplace, risk assessments, guidance, suitability, working from home etc. Simon will introduce lawyers to considering claims brought by employees due to accidents at home, contracting Covid-19 in the workplace and establishing a claim.

The seminar will consider the common law duty of care and duties beyond the workplace.

• Falls and risk assessments
• Safe means of access and egress from the place of work.
• The provision of work equipment.
• Covid-19, returning to work, appropriateness, suitability of workplace, risk assessments and compliance with guidance.
• Common law duty of care to keep employees safe.
• Duties to employees beyond the workplace.

We will consider and analyse current thinking and principles on whether an expert is necessary to determine the issues, how to choose and assess the suitability of an expert, what happens when your expert changes his/her mind and an overview on the court’s current approach to surveillance evidence.

Expert evidence can be important in establishing breach of duty and causation. On the other hand, expert evidence may be unnecessary and deflect from the issues in dispute. We will analyse current case law and the court’s thinking on necessity and admissibility.

What happens when your expert changes his mind? We will look at the best way of salvaging the position. Surveillance evidence is as popular as ever. We will review the current thinking on the need for surveillance evidence and whether it is proportionate and necessary to admit such evidence.

• Do you need an expert? Is expert evidence necessary?
• Choosing an expert: is the expert actually an expert?
• Instructing a new expert, where an expert changes his/her opinion.
• Surveillance evidence.

No area of personal injury litigation has seen the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and the High Court as this topic in recent times.

This session will cover in detail the two most recent Supreme Court authorities involving Morrisons Supermarket and Barclays Bank. It will review the earlier Supreme Court decisions and Court of Appeal cases and see to what extent the new authorities have changed the landscape in this vexed area.

Specific regard will be given to the practicalities of risk assessment and advice to clients to ensure that practitioners are insulated from the risk of taking on a case and ultimately being unsuccessful.

A complete set of notes will also be available to digestive and reflect upon.

• Develop a working knowledge of Vicarious Liability.
• Have a better understanding of the 2 most recent Supreme Court cases
• Appreciate where the law now is and any uncertainties that will continue to arise.
• Be able to fully and adequately risk assess a claim involving this area of law.

This area has significantly developed in the past years with a line of authorities which expand the risk for claimants pursuing claims in each and every type of personal injury matter.

The session will cover both CPR 44.16 and the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 S 57, there will be an in-depth review of the leading authorities and most recent cases, and detailed comments and observations regarding strategies employed by Defendants in seeking to pursue and ultimately establish F D.in various types of personal injury claims.

The session will look at what coping strategies that can be employed if a practitioner is faced with an allegation of this nature and what steps and evidence can be taken to combat it.

There will be a detailed set of notes made available in order that delegates can review and reflect upon the case law.

• Develop coping strategies if confronted with an assertion of Fundamental Dishonesty
• Have a better understanding of the framework of the rules and legislation surrounding this topic
• Be aware of the detailed case law and the nature of the evidence that is required to establish F D including the key trigger points that the court will have to assess.