[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 22:56:42 +0100
Tuesday, May 24, 2005, 7:51:46 PM, Paul Stone wrote:
>>I'm surprised you don't have any contingency-fee type arrangements
>>there.
PS> It's against the law. I think, in the overall scheme of things,=20
PS> that's probably a good thing. It's not generally a very litigious soci=
ety,
PS> but with the beast to the south's influence, it probably would be. Just=
the
PS> other day, a hairdresser in a nearby city won an award of 384,000 dolla=
rs
PS> from a the Culligan water company because there was a fly in his bottled
PS> water and he 'lost his sense of humour' and suffered panic attacks. THI=
S IS
PS> A TRUE STORY!!!
I used to think like you about this. I've changed my mind as I've
seen what is (here) the myth of a compensation culture used to make it
even more difficult -- that is, I think that's the idea -- for people
who've been injured to sue.
Here are two pieces about the part of this I've come to know best,
personal injury suits against employers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4563987.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-5018517,00.html?gusrc=3Dti=
cker-103704
I posted about this elsewhere; I got, to my great surprise, an e-mail
from a man currently working for a company that's a liability adjuster
for (i.e. defends) companies sued by employees using no win/no fee.
He confirmed what these pieces say and added that very few claims were
unjustified or inflated, and most were by people who'd had really
nasty accidents caused by their employer's carelessness.
(What little I know of this man suggests the job was always intended to
be temporary and he'd move on soon, he has no axe to grind.)
I said "even more difficult..for people...to sue"; but of course the rich
can sue. (I can too given my insurance, but I have to have a good case:
the rich can sue anyway.) A woman here died after giving birth in a
private hospital -- they'd neglected a very basic NHS rule which would
have been good practice there too -- and when the hospital refused to
apologise her husband, who's rich, took them to the
cleaners... I was really glad he did that, but, I'd like to see
someone do it to an NHS hospital, too.
There were 2 very bad no win/no fee companies here, they didn't warn
people of possible costs, or didn't warn them adequately; and they
were charging rather high fees if they won a case. And they really
were touting for custom: they found out I'd had an accident and
pestered me, despite my telling them the place where I fell -- which
is dangerous, something should be done about it -- wasn't actually
defective... -- finally someone senior in the company took over, and
immediately agreed I had no case (!) and apologised for the hassle.
But there is one very good no win/no fee company -- of the same kind,
but, with a very good record -- and I took their name down as soon as
I saw it.
It may be different over there. Here, people who work in private
hospitals are (I am told -- reliably) normally very careful,
they are concerned about legal cases. In my local teaching hospital,
staff against whom there might be a complaint (or in my case and my
mother's, someone who knew something and talked) suddenly vanish,
moved to another ward for a month... then they bounce back...
"with impunity" describes it well.
So, yes, I've become a "sue the ******s" person. I wish I hadn't. I'd
like the people who go on about introducing a no-fault compensation
scheme that would, they say, cost less, to do that very thing. But
they won't and I'd say they know that's because such a scheme would in
fact cost more -- I'm assuming a current ratio of 20+ formal complaints to
every legal case, and noting the disparity between the largest
non-court settlement I know of for a death caused by a hospital (about
=A33,400) and the court ones (say =A3250,000). Add in the people who
don't complain now because they're afraid to or they don't know how,
and you see why the powers that be might prefer to keep the current
system but limit access to it and encourage talk about a "compensation
culture". ******s.
Judy
--=20
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
