Funding Your Claim
There are 3 main ways of funding a medical negligence claim, which are as follows:
Public Funding (Legal Aid).
In order to be eligible for legal aid you will need to satisfy 2 tests, one in relation to your means (i.e. your income and capital) and another in relation to the merits of your case.
Means Test
If you receive the following you will automatically pass the means test
- Income support
- Income based Job Seeker’s Allowance
- Guarantee State Pension Credit
If however you do not receive any of the above benefits, in order to pass the means test you will have to satisfy both the income and capital criteria.
Income
In order to pass the income criteria your earnings before tax must be less than £2435 per month. After you have paid tax, national insurance, housing costs (not including bills or living expenses) and any maintenance payments your income must be less than £672 per month.
Capital
In order to pass the capital criteria you must not have;1. More than £100,000 equity in your house. You can work this out by
Deducting the remaining mortgage from the value of the property, if this number does not exceed 100,000 you may be eligible for public funding.
2. More than £3,000 in savings.
If however you have more than £3,000 in savings but less than £8,000, you may still be financially eligible for Public Funding on a sliding scale. This may mean that you will be required to make a contribution towards your legal fees on a monthly basis.
You can check to see if you are eligible for public funding by accessing the Legal Service Commissions calculator at...
Are You Eligible For Public Funding - click here
Merits Test
Having passed the means test you must also satisfy the merits test, which has two elements to it.
1. It will be necessary for you to pursue the NHS Complaints Procedure,
Unless the procedure is not available to you, for example you are out of time (i.e. the alleged negligent treatment took place more than 6 mouths ago.)
2. Your claim must be valued at more than £10,000.
Having satisfied both the means and merits test Public Funding will be granted.
Legal Expenses Insurance
You may already have insurance to cover legal or medical claims; such cover can be tied to an existing insurance policy, such as your Home Contents and Building Insurance and even your car insurance.
If you have this cover you will need to provide us with your insurance policy details, so that we can ask their permission to act on your behalf. The relevant policy will be the one which was in force at the date of the alleged negligent act. Once the insurers are satisfied as to the merits of your case, your legal costs will usually be covered under this policy.
Conditional Fee Agreement (No Win, No Fee Agreement)
At Goodmans we are proud to be able to offer clients the facility of funding their medical negligence claims by way of a conditional fee agreement , more commonly known as “ no win no fee “.
Our ability to offer such an agreement will depend entirely upon the merits of your case and will be discussed with you before you formally instruct us.
We have also been able to secure the agreement from specialist medical negligence barristers to agree to act on appropriate case by way of a CFA agreement
Together with the CFA we can offer an insurance product that will cover not only all of your own expenses (e.g. cost of obtaining expert medical reports) but will protect you against the risk of having to pay your opponent’s legal costs if your case is unsuccessful.
The Insurance product we can offer you is a fully insured deferred premium, which means that you do not have to pay for the insurance premium until the end of the case. The cost of this premium is claimed against the other side if you win and you are insured against the cost of the premium if you lose.
When appropriate we will fully explain all aspects of purchasing such Insurance.