Road Traffic Accident in UK Law

The whole purpose of introducing Section II of Part 45 was to impose a somewhat rough and ready system in a limited class of cases because the commercial interests behind the parties, who bear the burden of large numbers of such cases, considered that, taken overall, it was fair and saved both time and money.

Everyone knows, or should know, that the consumption of even small quantities of alcohol undermines the ability of any driver to apply his full concentration to the road. Where the consumption is high, it is effectively extinguished. Alcohol makes a driver personally unfit to drive, and the car of which he is in control becomes as dangerous with him at the wheel as if it were subject to a serious known, potentially fatal, mechanical defect.

In my judgment on the facts of this case there was an inexorable progression from the moment when the fit occurred as a result of the failure of the hospital properly to diagnose and then to treat the baby, the fit causing the brain damage which shortly thereafter made termination of this child's life inevitable and the dreadful climax when the child died in her arms. It is a seamless tale with an obvious beginning and an equally obvious end.

Edmondson's primary case on notice is that the provisions of the Protocol and the Portal are, in themselves in the modern climate of litigation, ample and sufficient notice of a lien. She also points to paragraph 3.1 of the Protocol which states that the aims of the Protocol include ensuring that the defendant pays damages and costs using the process set out in the Protocol and that the claimant's representative receives the fixed costs at the end of each stage of the Protocol.

If a case begins under the fixed costs regime then it should only be in exceptional circumstances that the parties are able to escape it. The whole point of the regime is to ensure that both sides begin and end the proceedings with the expectation that fixed costs is all that will be recoverable. It also ensures that, in low value claims, the costs which are incurred are proportionate.