
Hot off the press! The Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2024 (SI 2024/106) are to come into force on 6 April. They address a variety of concerns generated by the October 2023 fixed recoverable costs reforms.
Regulation 6(2)(a)(ii) is the one that claimant clinical negligence practitioners have been panting for.
The default position in the new intermediate track for claims worth between £25,000 and £100,000 is that clinical negligence claims are excluded. However, an exception was provided for where a defendant ‘admitted both breach of duty and causation’.
What though would amount to such an admission? Precisely when was the admission to be made? The answer is:
‘(ii) there has been an admission of liability in full, which means that the defendant accepts that the claimant has suffered loss, including the injury set out in the letter of claim under the Pre-Action Protocol for the Resolution of Clinical Disputes, caused by the defendant’s breach of duty of care; and